


intro to mortal studies

by firstaudrina



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018), Chilling Adventures of Sabrina - Sarah Rees Brennan
Genre: M/M, Romantic Comedy, college but it's not an AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:01:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27661042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: Harvey’s freshman year at Greendale Community College starts going spectacularly wrong when he walks into Life Drawing and Nicholas Scratch is the model. Post-series. Not an AU.
Relationships: Harvey Kinkle/Nicholas Scratch
Comments: 226
Kudos: 180





	1. course description

**Author's Note:**

> While in the middle of a heavily plotted fic with a million characters, I was seized by the desire to do the opposite of that. Rating will shift to explicit in later chapters.

Harvey’s late. Maybe that should be his first warning, a tip-off to the turn his day is about to take. A morning in the mines left him scrambling to shower and change before hurrying to school, but his professor likes him, so it isn’t a problem; she once ran into his father in town and ever since has cut Harvey a little more slack than he really deserves. Everyone else is already at their easels when Harvey skids through the door, but Professor Greenleaf waves him on as she leans closer to his classmate’s work and murmurs what’s sure to be a keen-eyed suggestion. Harvey grins, setting down his bag and thermos before plucking the pencil from behind his ear, ready to get to work. 

Prof lays her hand on his back as she passes, warm and solid, sort of like a mom might do. It’s really nice. The morning’s rush melts from Harvey’s shoulders.

Life Drawing is Harvey’s favorite class, the only time all week when he feels like he can breathe, where he won’t be lagging behind or struggling, where he can turn his brain off and just _draw_. Prof even lets him listen to music most of the time. Harvey’s never sheepish about the models, nude or not, because this is about art, appreciating the human body however it looks. The models don’t come in to be ogled by him, but captured, and Harvey likes to focus on the smallest details with the greatest dedication — the texture of the hair in one woman’s braids, the complicated mechanics of a pair of hands. Today’s model is facing away from him, just a mop of dark curly hair and sloping shoulders, back decorated with a few stray freckles. Harvey is so intent on the miniscule dips and curves of the model’s shoulder blades that he actually sighs in disappointment when Prof calls for a pose switch.

Harvey shuffles his papers around for a fresh sheet. He rolls a cramp out of his hand. He gulps a mouthful of hot coffee. He’s so wrapped up in all these little readjustments that it hits him like a city bus when he looks up and comes face to face with Nick Scratch. 

Naked Nick Scratch. 

Nick Scratch with his hair tousled and skin bared, a clean line from shoulder to torso to hip to thigh that Harvey can already, annoyingly, feel the shape of on the paper. It’ll take one sweep of his hand to mark it out, tip of the pencil dragging down in one unbroken glide.

But that’s not the point. The point isn’t that Nick is naked; it’s that Nick is _here_.

Harvey’s wide-eyed shock is momentarily mirrored on Nick’s face, but then Nick laughs, bright and startled, all white teeth and olive skin. His broad smile is so unexpected that the girl next to Harvey audibly gasps. When Nick gives Harvey a playful little wave, she makes an aggrieved noise and glares at him. Harvey glares right back, because he never did anything to her and Nick being here isn’t _his_ fault, he refuses to be blamed for it. 

Nick is laughing a little, silently, leaning back on the stool with one foot resting on the lowest rung. Harvey hasn’t seen him in more than six months, since before Nick and Sabrina’s last break-up, the one they thought was maybe final. Harvey figured the next time he saw Nick, if he ever saw Nick again, would be across a bloody battle with some kind of tentacle monster or heavenly army, some new and impossible threat.

But it’s Monday morning at Greendale Community College, Harvey has been up and working since 4 a.m., and now he gets to draw his ex-girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend’s dick.

You can’t make this stuff up. 

College isn’t really what Harvey thought it would be, not that he let himself imagine too often. Tommy did all the imagining for him. Once he was gone, Harvey just held on and tried to survive whatever was thrown at him next: heralds of Satan wearing velvet headbands, day trips to Hell, virgin-sacrificing pagans, eldritch terrors. Girlfriends who moved up and moved on.

If Harvey was going to let himself think about college the way Tommy thought about it for him, then it would have been art school on the East Coast, because Harvey liked seasons too much to go without them. His whole life would be art, staying up late with paints and pastels on his hands, all over his clothes. Maybe he’d get into sculpting. He would dye his hair some weird color. Maybe pink. His dad would hate that. Harvey wouldn’t ever go home for the holidays.

Instead, college is kind of like High School: The Sequel, except without any of the people who made high school tolerable in the first place. He crosses paths now and then with someone from Baxter — and there was the whole thing with Carl — but overall Harvey is on his own. He trudges in and out of core classes, just one art elective a semester because he can’t afford more and doesn’t have the time, either. Theo calls. Roz texts. Sabrina sometimes sends cardinals tapping at his windows with little notes. He saw them all at Christmas. But there are long stretches of time without any of them in it, Harvey stuck in his childhood bedroom while they have found their own bright futures. 

Roz is at Stanford. Theo is thriving at a small liberal arts university in Washington. Sabrina went to a witch school in the Other Realm that can only be reached when the moon is at a certain position in the sky. All of his friends flung themselves out of town with the speed of frogs escaping a boiling pot while Harvey allowed himself to turn to sludge. 

He shouldn’t think like that. He’s safe, he’s alive, and he’s drawing. He can’t ask for more than that.

And he won’t. 

Nick comes up to Harvey when class is over, trousers tugged up loosely but unbuttoned, sweater hung over a bare shoulder and t-shirt in his hands. “Harry. Fancy seeing you here.”

“His name’s Harvey,” says the girl next to them, tossing her hair aggressively over her shoulder. Harvey immediately feels bad because he doesn’t know her name.

“Who’s?” Nick asks politely, smiling, and that gets her all flustered again.

“The art student in the art class,” Harvey says pointedly. He’s the one who is exactly where he’s supposed to be, unlike Nick, who should probably be at some kind of ritualistic orgy or grandiose magical library. 

Nick’s smile becomes a little more acerbic, a little more amused. “I thought you’d gotten into some posh art program out of state.”

Harvey’s surprised Nick knows that. He shrugs, busying himself by shoving his stuff into his bag. He closes the sketchbook over the image of Nick, body like a statue rendered in graphite. “Shit happens.”

“Doesn’t it just.” Nick gives Harvey an inquisitive once-over but doesn’t ask. He finally pulls his t-shirt over his head, but that makes his sweater slip free; Harvey catches it before it hits the ground, the fabric soft and expensive in his hands. He feels stupid holding it out halfway between them for Nick to take when he’s good and ready and he wants to let it fall, but he doesn’t. “Suppose I’ll be seeing you around, then.”

Dread drops into the pit of Harvey’s stomach. “Why?”

Nick takes the sweater. He’s already moving back as he answers, distance between them widening, his grin wicked. “I’m enrolled!”

Harvey wants to believe that Nick is joking.

Nick is not joking.

Three days later Harvey walks into Intro to American Lit and finds Nick seated front row center, two desks taken over by his teetering stacks of books. He must have brought everything on the syllabus. He has a large leather-bound tome open in front of him, its unlined page already nearly full of notes in precise calligraphy. “Dude,” Harvey breathes, both weirded out and a little stunned.

Nick glances up, silver tip of his fountain pen lifting from the page, and blinks. “Harry. We must stop meeting like this.”

“I’m trying,” Harvey says honestly. He picks up the book on top of Nick’s pile and flips through it. Its margins are packed with scribbles and different passages are underlined in multi-color ink. Harvey should tell him about Post-Its. “Are these color-coded?”

“Obviously,” Nick says, as though Harvey is very stupid.

“You know you don’t have to bring _all_ the books to every class.”

Nick pauses, as though he, perhaps, did not know that. “Well, I have a lot of questions. Have you read that yet?”

Harvey hasn’t even gotten it from the library yet. “No.”

“I find mort—” Nick’s teeth click closed on the word _mortal_. “I find all this literature terribly fascinating. I’ve never read anything like it before.”

Harvey pulls his gaze up from the book and looks at Nick, really looks at him: his smoothed-down hair, his sweater over a collared shirt, the open expression of someone eager to learn. And he asks the thing that’s been driving him crazy for three straight days. “Nick. Why are you _here?”_

Nick opens his mouth, but before he can respond, the harried professor bursts through the door with an armful of papers and a to-go cup he’s clutching for dear life. “Come on, everybody, take a seat,” he calls, which is when Harvey realizes he’s the only one still standing. Nick moves his bag and Harvey has no option but to take the desk next to him, in the _front row_ , on the very first day of class. 

Nick helpfully nudges the books closer to him. “Feel free to look on with me,” he says, but his hand is already up, trying to get the teacher’s attention. “Excuse me, professor —”

Harvey slinks down in his seat and prays, to the False God or anyone else listening, that the floor will open up and swallow him. 

Nick spends the entire hour peppering the professor with rapid-fire questions about the syllabus until Harvey genuinely worries that the man is going to cry. Initial delight at Nick’s enthusiasm appears to have worn down into a slightly desperate exhaustion. Harvey doesn’t know what other schools are like, but some of the teachers here really seem like they’re hanging on by a thread. 

Harvey plans to tune Nick out, but after a minute, he finds himself sort of — interested, at least, in how passionate Nick is, even about this, stuff that must seem like small potatoes to the best warlock at the Invisible Academy. It reminds Harvey a little of Roz and Sabrina, way back before they ever knew the dark secrets lurking in their small town, when they’d be sitting side by side in Ms. Wardwell’s English class having a spirited discussion of three, because no one else was tuned in enough to care. Even Nick’s posture is the same: leaning in over the little desk with his shoulders up, pen never leaving his fingers just in case. 

It doesn’t make any sense. If Harvey didn’t know any better, he’d think Nick was having _fun_.

The class seems grateful when the professor calls it quits; even the gaggle of girls sitting behind Nick and dreamily eyeing the back of his head appear ready for a ceasefire. “It’s too bad classes are so short here,” Nick sighs. “And they’ll only let me take so many of them. Did you know there was a limit? Ridiculous. They don’t even have any classes after midnight!”

“Yeah, people too busy sleeping and junk, no dedication to their studies,” Harvey says dryly. He stands, hip resting against the edge of the desktop, and starts handing Nick books so he can put them away. “You gonna be able to carry all that?”

Nick flashes him a smirk. “I think I can handle it, farm boy.” He takes one book, the one Harvey had been looking at, and slaps it against his chest. “Try to catch up before next class.”

He’s gone in the time it takes Harvey to grab the book. 

“Nick,” he says, aghast. He looks around and finds himself alone in the room, but even so, “You can’t teleport out of a mortal classroom!”

No one is around to hear him.

Harvey next sees Nick at a party.

Harvey doesn’t go to parties a lot, and he gets invited to them even less. But there are only so many hours he can spend on his own, holed up in his room studying or drawing; picking up extra shifts at his on-campus office job; begging Prof for a little extra time in the studio. Only so many excuses he can make to avoid sitting opposite his dad at the dinner table, so every so often when someone says to him, “Dude, you should totally come,” Harvey does. 

There aren’t official sororities at GCC, but former Ravenettes look after their own and they’ve been passing down an old pink Craftsman from cheerleader to cheerleader for decades. There’s almost always something going on over the weekend: a keg in the backyard, music muffled but blasting, kids spilling out onto the lawn. Greendale’s enduring respect for football and cheer keeps neighbors from calling the cops. Harvey always has a burst of optimism the minute before he steps through the door, and then he spends the night nursing one beer and wondering why he ever thought this would be a good idea.

Tonight is one of those nights, but for a different reason. Nick is here, and he’s dancing.

All the furniture in the living room has been pushed up against the walls, leaving a square of worn-in mauve carpet beaten down from too many years of collegiate stampeding. It’s crowded with co-eds but in the middle is Nick. He’s slightly taller than most of the surrounding girls, but he would stand out even if he wasn’t. In a room of crushed plastic cups and décor ten years out of date, Nick is a rare and strange thing — his black hair glossy with sweat, skin gleaming with it, eyes closed as his head rolls back on his neck, body moving to the music. His shirt has come undone down the front and people keep touching him, pressing up against him. Their hands on his chest and his hips, Nick insensate to it, allowing it but not returning it, letting them buoy him enough to keep dancing. 

Harvey is starting to wonder if he’s in an actual episode of _The Twilight Zone_. 

He’s so focused on Nick that he collides directly with someone trying to sidle past him, and the apology dies on his lips when he sees that it’s Carl. Then he finds his manners. “Uh, sorry, dude. Wasn’t paying attention.”

Carl, with the inveterate skill of a boy who spent high school going to keggers, manages not to spill a drop of his beer in the dust-up. “Uh-huh.” 

Always a man of few words, Carl.

He follows Harvey’s line of sight to Nick and makes a huffy kind of exhalation, burying it in a swallow of beer almost immediately. “Isn’t that the guy Sabrina Spellman used to date?”

Sometimes Harvey can be a man of few words himself. “Yep.”

“What’s he doing here? Wasn’t he, like, a private school kid?”

“Sort of,” Harvey says. “No idea. We’re not friends.”

“Sure.” His eyes narrow a little. “Isn’t he a little out of your league?”

Harvey’s jaw tightens. “Weren’t you?”

Carl scowls, mumbling a barely audible, “Whatever,” before he pushes on through the crowd. 

Harvey looks back just in time to see Nick pull away from the brunette he’s kissing and meet the lips of the tall guy standing behind him. Harvey’s throat constricts and his stomach clenches and he thinks — 

Where anyone could see him. Of course Nick could, and of course everyone would let him.

Harvey is lucky enough to run into a couple of the art kids in one of the quieter back rooms. They’re more than acquaintances and less than friends, and it’s nice to talk about nothing serious with people who have no preconceived notions about him. They joke and laugh, share anecdotes about Prof and complain about school. He follows them outside when they want to share a cigarette, though he doesn’t smoke himself. They huddle together in the late January air, but Harvey doesn’t feel the chill. Sabrina had enchanted his jacket when she came home for Christmas so he would never get cold. _It’ll keep you warm while I’m away_ , she’d said, but Harvey hadn’t known what to make of it, so he’d smothered whatever bubbled up in his chest.

She has a new boyfriend at her witch school, anyway.

Harvey considered sending her a message when he first saw Nick, but Nick was a touchy subject, and he could only get through to her if he lit a black candle during a waxing gibbous at exactly three-oh-two in the morning. It was a little more involved than sending a text. He hadn’t wanted to bother her. 

He always thinks of Sabrina when he stares up at the moon, now waning white in the black sky. He stays outside when the art kids go back in, and when the crowd thins, wouldn’t you know it? Nick is out here too.

“Dude!” Harvey says. “Why are you here!”

Nick startles, automatically crossing his arms and frowning. He isn’t wearing a coat. “It’s too hot inside,” he says defensively.

“No, not — would you come over here, you must be freezing — not out _here_.” Harvey takes the gloves out of his pocket and foists them on Nick. “I meant why are you at Greendale Community? Why are you even _in_ Greendale?”

If there are witch academies and witch universities, then Harvey doesn’t doubt that there is one out there with a place for Nick Scratch. Sabrina mentioned some of the Invisible Academy students were at school with her, but others had gone to other places; Harvey knows Prudence is in training to be the next High Priestess after Zelda Spellman, because he runs into her and Ambrose at Dr. Cerberus’ occasionally. For all Harvey was inundated with witches before, he rarely crosses paths with them now. Present circumstances notwithstanding.

“I live here,” Nick says archly, but he puts the gloves on. 

“And you just up and decided to go to mortal college one day?”

“Well,” Nick says. “Actually.”

Harvey stares at him. 

“I already know as much about witchcraft as it’s possible to know,” Nick continues, defensive again. “I’m a nationally ranked conjurer. And I have no lack of time to develop my abilities in the future.” His chin juts up arrogantly. “But I don’t know anything about mortals, and I’d like to.”

Harvey thinks of the margins of Nick’s books, filled with notes. Nick asking all those questions. 

“Okay, sure,” Harvey says, deciding to accept that, because he has no other choice. “But GCC? Aren’t you supposed to be really smart? Couldn’t you have gone somewhere better?”

Nick’s chest puffs, smug. “Yes, obviously. But I don’t exist in the mortal world. Falsified documents can only take you so far. GCC has a hundred percent acceptance rate. They’ll take anyone. I could have been a serial killer and they’d have taken me.”

Really great night for Harvey’s ego.

“But I may transfer later on,” Nick adds thoughtfully. “Perhaps to Harvard. Or Yale.”

Wryly, Harvey says, “Dream big.” 

Nick smiles. He has his arms wrapped around himself so he must be feeling the temperature by now, his sweat dried to a slight sheen all over his body. He hasn’t done up his shirt yet, though, which is ridiculous. There’s snow on the ground. Harvey is about to ask if he wants to go back in when Nick says, “What about you?”

“What about me?”

Nick arches an eyebrow.

“Oh.” Harvey looks away and rubs the back of his neck. “Like I said. Shit —”

“Happens, yeah,” Nick says. Harvey can feel Nick watching him, the weight of that intuitive gaze. He refuses to meet it. Discomfort prickles over his skin and he keeps his chin tilted down and to the side, thinking, _let it go, just let it go, just drop it_. Nick makes a small sound, a sort of _hm_ , and then asks, “Did you do the reading?”

Relieved, Harvey shakes his head. “Not yet.”

“Gotta get on it, mortal.” Nick reaches over to take Harvey by the lapel, tugging him back towards the door. “Come on. It’s cold out here.”

Later, Harvey realizes Nick had been looking at the moon, too.


	2. objectives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harvey helps Nick decipher emojis, among other indignities.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 4 is not canon for this story; only Parts 1 - 3 are, as well as the tie-in novels. Though I must say, after recent developments, I feel really strongly about giving these kids a future.

Harvey has twenty minutes to grab something to eat between his morning classes and his afternoon block, so after texting his dad (their customary _u good?_ and the answering thumbs-up) he ducks into the dining hall. He pushes his tray along, getting this or that without fuss, and then scans for any empty tables. He doesn’t always get lucky, often stuck leaning by the windows with his tray half-balanced on the sill, squinting against the glare from outside while he tries to get in some last-minute cramming. 

There’s a table with four chairs but just one guy, and he’s buried in textbooks, so Harvey figures he can maybe elbow in to scarf his food and go — until he gets a little closer and does a double-take, because the guy is Nick. Nick with mussed hair and glasses in a bright green sweatshirt with GCC emblazoned on it in huge chartreuse letters. The mascot lurks beneath, a frankly nightmarish great horned owl that seems to glare at Harvey judgmentally from the fabric. It is also chartreuse. 

Perhaps feeling eyes on him, Nick glances up and catches Harvey, his eyebrow tugging up curiously as he smiles. He waves. Harvey waves back, then jumps on a table opening up in his peripheral vision, bringing his tray crashing down before the girls sitting there have even fully vacated. “Sorry,” he says, sheepish, but he can’t help it. He’s too glad to be freed from an accidental lunch with Nick Scratch. 

He barely gets one bite of his burger before Nick settles in across from him. “That was rude, Harry,” he notes.

“It was,” Harvey agrees. “You probably shouldn’t sit with someone so terribly, terribly rude. Punish me with solitude.” 

“Kinky,” Nick says. “It’s much more fun to torture you up close.”

“I really thought college was going to finally free me from bullying.”

“No,” Nick says, serene, “I think it’s your personality that’s keeping you trapped in that cycle.”

“Actually, I think that’s _your_ personality,” Harvey offers wryly, and Nick grins. After a moment, nudging a little at his fries, he adds, “I didn’t know you wore glasses.”

“Oh.” Nick adjusts them like he’d forgotten they were there, faint embarrassment coloring his expression for a moment. “Usually I use a spell, but I’ve been at the books all day — I just came down to get something quick.”

Harvey nods first and hears second, words reverberating in his head with a damning echo. _Came down_ … Came down…from where? “Nick. Do you _live_ here?”

“Yes.” Nick gives him a look that’s half disdainful and half worried, an odd combination in conflict on his face. “Is it not customary for students to live in dorms?”

“No, it is, but —” Harvey remembers Nick teleporting out of their shared class, which he did again leaving the party last week: he simply wandered down a dark side alley and was gone before Harvey could offer him a ride to wherever. He’s someone who’s used to magic in the most mundane circumstances; who uses spells to fix his vision instead of contacts. “Uh, how are you adjusting to that?”

Disdain wins. “I lived in dorms at the Academy, too. I’m not feral, Harry, I know how to live with other people.”

“I know you’re not feral, Nick. I just meant that you’ve never lived with mortals.”

Nick’s hunched shoulders settle. “That reminds me. I did want to ask you something.” He starts rummaging in his bag. “I would ask someone else, obviously, but they might think I’m crazy —”

“Glad to be of service,” Harvey mutters. He checks the time.

“I have a phone now!” Nick declares, and brandishes said phone, which is in a GCC-branded case that goes with the sweatshirt. It occurs to Harvey that Nick might not know where to buy mortal things outside of Dr. Cee’s and the campus store. “Anyway, this girl has been texting me —”

Harvey can already see where this is going. “Oh god.”

“And she keeps sending these tiny pictures —”

_“Oh my god.”_

“Harry, calm down, I’m not asking for your kidney.” Nick deftly navigates the screen before turning it towards Harvey so he can see the text chain. “I just want to make sure I understand the implication.”

The most recent message, from a girl identified only as _Amber?_ , is a string of emojis: water droplets, a tongue, an oyster half-shell, and a winky face. Harvey has his suspicions, but scrolls up anyway for context and sees a photo that makes him drop the phone with a half-strangled yelp. “Nick!” he scolds, scandalized. “This is private! I don’t need to see pictures of you like that! Dude!”

Nick rolls his eyes. “Oh, please, you have pencil sketches of me like that. Don’t overreact. We’re talking about those — what are they called?”

“Emojis,” Harvey says faintly. His hands feel like they’re vibrating.

“Emojis,” Nick repeats, satisfied. His eyebrows lift expectantly.

Harvey fumbles over what to say for a minute, eyes straying to the time once again, before he gives Nick a halting explanation of Amber Question Mark’s probable intentions. “But you still have to ask,” Harvey adds with hasty severity. “You have to make sure before you assume —”

“Yes, enthusiastic consent, yes.” Nick waves that off, studying his phone with something akin to disappointment. Not exactly the reaction one would expect to a pretty girl making suggestions about her half-shell. “I was hoping there was more poetry to it than that.” His voice turns wistful. “Have you ever read hieroglyphic verse?”

Harvey wonders how this happened to him. “Uh, no.” 

“I’m taking Ancient Egypt and Its Civilization, though of course I’m already familiar with hieratic.” Nick sighs. “You know, based on you, I assumed all mortals were sexually repressed, but I get sent filth on a near daily basis.”

Torn between offense and — no, he’s mostly offended. “I’m not —” he starts, but another thing he’s _not_ is having that conversation ten minutes before class, so he pivots to, “Is your consent enthusiastic?”

The corner of Nick’s lips lifts. “Very,” he says. “Thanks for asking, farm boy.”

Harvey huffs, and almost laughs, which is weird, it’s a weird feeling. He’s definitely late now, so he wraps his uneaten burger in a napkin and is getting ready to go when Nick thrusts the phone at him one more time. “Your number.”

Harvey raises his eyebrows.

“What if I need to know something about mortals?”

Harvey gives him a doubtful look, but also gives Nick his number, so fool him twice, shame on him. “I don’t consent to pictures.” 

Nick smiles. “Hieroglyphs only,” he promises.

Harvey fears a sudden influx of texts from Nick, a deluge of questions and questionable emojis, but Nick doesn’t take advantage of their newly open lines of communication. Harvey must check his phone a hundred times over the next few days, jumping every time it buzzes, but Nick never texts him. 

In the shower, Harvey thinks of accidental discoveries; scrolling up; art class. He shudders into his hand, and later feels so guilty he can’t look at himself in the mirror.

Nick reappears in Life Drawing, but this time Harvey is prepared, or at least inured. He sets his jaw and gets grimly down to business, shaking his head at the smile Nick gives him before stripping off his robe and draping himself on the platform. It’s easier once Harvey gets started, because drawing makes everything inside him go quiet. All the buzzing and churning stops so there is only him, the pencil, the paper; the things he can make out of a blank space. If he thinks of Nick as shapes and lines then it’s not so bad. Aesthetically, Nick is…not terrible.

As class nears its end, Harvey realizes Nick has fallen asleep, turned half on his side with his arm tucked under his head, knees drawn up slightly and back bowed. Professor Greenleaf brings a finger to her lips, murmuring softly, “Life of a student, huh, guys?”

Quiet laughter. Harvey sketches out the curve of Nick’s back with one expansive flick of his wrist and then begins to fill in the details. The pull of muscle across his chest as one arm flings out. The hard swell of his hip. In sleep, Nick’s face is relaxed and almost soft, nonthreatening and not too cool, just tired and untroubled. 

Prof comes by and squeezes Harvey’s shoulder, offering, “Good work, Harv. Strong lines.”

He likes that she calls him that. It’s a little ache every time, but not a bad one. It’s like hearing a good song on the radio for the first time in too long, one that goes _‘Brina Theo Roz_. 

When class ends, Harvey says, “I’ll do it — we sort of know each other.”

The girl who always snags the easel next to Harvey sighs from where she’s loitering by the door, probably giving up hope of catching Nick awake, and goes. She’s the last one to leave the room before Prof, balancing impressively under her usual piles of scarves and sketchpads, nodding at Harvey as she closes the door behind her.

Harvey puts the robe over Nick first and then sits, not sure if he should nudge Nick, whether it’s appropriate or not to touch him. His hand hovers over Nick’s bare shoulder before it comes back to lay in his lap. He settles for slowly increasing volume: “Nick? Hey, Nick. _Nick_. Scratch!”

Nick jolts and then groans, hand covering his eyes and a frown beneath it. “Oh,” he says, surly. “It’s you. What time is it?”

Harvey surveys Nick with a supremely unimpressed look that Nick can’t even see because of the aforementioned hand over the eyes. Why did he volunteer for this? “After 10:30.”

Nick jerks up, instantly awake, and exclaims, “I’m late! I have Psychology of Language!” 

He lets the robe fall away carelessly, Harvey averting his gaze with a flinch, and then snaps his fingers so he’s fully dressed again. Harvey is torn between, “Wait, what even is your major?” and then, “ _Nick_ , you have to stop doing magic where people can see you!”

“It’s only you,” Nick says, distracted as he scrambles for his books. “Gonna burn me at the stake for it, witch-hunter?”

Harvey glares at him. “You know —”

Nick turns long enough to grin and, just to be an asshole, vanishes with a cheery _pop!_

Nick is holding court in American Lit when Harvey gets there. He’s surrounded by a trio of girls asking him about narrative interpretations and whether or not he’s free for coffee later to talk about them. Nick is bright-eyed and smarmy, bag strapped over his chest and book in hand, turning pages as he talks. The girls crowd in, leaning around him. Harvey audibly scoffs as he throws himself into his seat, then realizes he sat exactly where he did last time without meaning to and wants to die.

It gets Nick’s attention. “Harry!” he exclaims. “You remember Amber?”

Harvey seizes. Amber, of the oyster shell and water droplets. Not enough poetry for Nick.

The strawberry blonde to his left frowns. “Amanda,” she corrects. 

That should be more than enough to kill his chances, really, but when Nick turns to her and takes her hands, repeating, “Amanda,” with gentle consideration, her entire body goes soft and dispersed as a cloud.

“Don’t feel bad about it,” Harvey says. “He doesn’t know anyone’s name.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Harry,” Nick says, grinning again, too terribly amused as he slides into his seat. Harvey just shakes his head, refuses to — refuses to _anything_.

During group work, it’s the two of them plus Shoshanna Feldman, another Baxter High survivor, and a football player who genuinely introduces himself as Brick. They’re studying _The Crucible_. The irony is not lost on Harvey. Sometimes his life feels like something someone is doing _to_ him.

They’re supposed to split duties — summaries, questions, significant passages, historical context — but Nick is trying to do all of it at once, and mostly succeeding. Brick has given up in relief and put in his ear pods, but Shoshanna keeps shooting looks at Harvey, like _is this guy for real?_ Harvey can only helplessly shrug.

“Of course, sending one’s spirit out is a much more complex ritual than the text suggests,” Nick says, ignoring Harvey’s wide eyes and rapid-yet-subtle headshake. “It takes a great deal of preparation and involves more steps than astral projection but is less dangerous if done correctly. In fact —" 

Shoshanna is staring at him with her eyebrows drawn together, lips slightly parted as though she’s not sure he’s still speaking English. Brick slowly removes one of his ear pods. There is silence. Harvey puts his face in his hand.

“I was homeschooled,” Nick adds.

“Ohhh,” leaves the group on a relieved, understanding sigh. And despite himself, Harvey stifles a laugh into his fingers. 

Harvey dumps his stuff in the entryway when he gets home. His dad’s aide is on her way out as he’s coming in, so Harvey offers her an earnest goodbye as she goes. Frankie is a cool no-nonsense middle-aged woman who sometimes leaves Tupperware of her family’s leftovers in the fridge for Harvey so he doesn’t have to cook. But today he gets briskly to work on dinner, washing his hands and starting in on meatloaf and mashed potatoes. He doesn’t say a word to his dad, parked in his chair in front of the TV in the living room. Doesn’t hear a word from him.

They eat in silence. Then Harvey asks his customary, “How do you feel today?”

His dad huffs and rolls his eyes, grumbles out a response that’s slightly slurred, both from the beer in his hand and the facial paralysis. Sabrina had to reverse the sobriety spell when it stopped his dad from taking painkillers. He picked up drinking again pretty quick. 

Harvey has enough practice to understand him. _Quit asking me,_ and then, more clearly, “Not an invalid.” 

Harvey nods. He no longer says, _I’m just concerned_. Instead, “Got homework. Gonna head upstairs — got the phone if you need me?”

His dad waves him off. He used to say, _You don’t need that school shit_. Or sometimes, _oh, that fruity fuckin’ art bullshit?_ They’ve since cut communication down to the necessities, and his dad saves the worst for special occasions. Thanksgiving had been fun. 

Harvey is glad to be in his room, where he can breathe easier and pretend the house doesn’t exist outside of his closed door. He pushes the window open all the way even though it’s cold and leans out into the night for a minute, eyes closed against the bracing chill. He waits until he shivers, then closes the window.

He showers and changes, putting on that old shirt Sabrina got him sophomore year of high school. He’s been wearing it more often since she went off to Witch U. It makes him feel better, like she’s there with him. He lies on his bed intending to draw but ends up staring at the ceiling instead, counting the cracks. It’s one of those nights. 

His phone buzzes, which usually means a meme from Theo at this hour, so he smiles. But it keeps buzzing. Harvey picks it up in confusion that only deepens when he reads the screen. The words don’t register for a moment. _Nick Scratch_ , it says. _Facetime_. 

Harvey stares uncomprehendingly, finger above the _decline_ button. Then he accepts. 

He’s treated to a grainy shot of Nick, everything fuzzy and dark. The phone’s camera is held at lip height, so all Harvey can see is Nick’s mouth, his jaw and throat. There’s the sound of wind whistling like he’s outside. “Harvey!” Nick says, which makes him sit up automatically. “No, wait. Forget I said that. Harry. Little mortal.”

Harvey slumps back, rolling his eyes. “Nick, you’re drunk.”

Nick readjusts, so now it’s his face, eyes dark and intent, hair spilling messily over his forehead. “ _You’re_ drunk,” he says, in that same brusque way as when he’d just woken up, bullheaded over nothing. He scowls. “No. You wouldn’t be, would you? You’re a good boy.”

“I’m hanging up,” Harvey warns. 

“Go ahead, do it,” Nick dares, but Harvey doesn’t, and Nick doesn’t push. 

“Where are you?”

The answer turns out to be some party, or it was, but now Nick is outside, slumped against a wall with his eyes going drowsily half-lidded. “These people are so boring,” he says. “Mortals. Just drinking and fucking and carrying on with their little lives. But everyone I know is boring too.” He scrubs a hand over his face, along his brow bone and digging into his temple. “I’m boring.”

Harvey sighs, familiar with this phase of the descent into drunkenness, the _poor me_ plateau. His dad would get antagonistic, but the vibe was the same — half-slumped over, unable to stop picking at past mistakes. _I fucked it all up, Harv_ , he’d say, and then change nothing. _I fucked it up, can’t do a damn thing about it. If I hadn’t —_

The end of the sentence never mattered. It was something he’d end up doing again. “You should go to bed, Nick.” He decides to make a concession. “Is there anyone around you? Can you teleport back to the dorms?”

“Obviously,” Nick scoffs, and pushes up, wavering on his feet. He does something with his hand out of frame, then frowns when it doesn’t work. He tries spinning next, like a Sailor Scout attempting to launch a transformation, but he just stumbles unsteadily sideways and groans, the sound of rising nausea and mistakes made. Still, he insists, “I can, just —”

“Stay put.” Harvey is already on his feet, already wishing he wasn’t. “I’ll come get you.”

Harvey picks Nick up at the corner of Chestnut St. and Pine, sitting on someone’s stone fence, or more accurately sliding off it. Harvey can see the party still raging two doors down, the windows flashing and ground buzzing with loud music. “Alright, easy does it,” Harvey says, getting Nick’s arm around his shoulders to bring him to the truck. Debating whether he should bring him home or drop him at the dorms, maybe sober him up first. 

“Harry.” Nick’s voice gets scary-sober and inquisitive. “What are you wearing?”

_Oh, no_ , he realizes. He hadn’t changed, just grabbed a jacket and left — the same jacket Nick is now sneaking his hand into so he can pluck at the hem of Harvey’s shirt, peering into the gap. Harvey pushes him off. “It’s a crop top, Nick,” he says severely. “Eyes up here.”

“Oh, is that what it is,” Nick teases, but the words don’t matter as much as the way he says them — playful and low, close to the shell of Harvey’s ear, his tongue lingering on every syllable. He grips the front of Harvey’s shirt and it tugs upwards, skin prickling in the cold. Harvey swallows.

He ends up taking Nick to this cheap pizza place near campus where they get a pie for five bucks and big bottles of water, one uncapped and pushed pointedly towards Nick across the sticky tabletop. Nick sinks down in the booth, head tilted back over the bench and throat exposed. “Eat,” Harvey tells him. “It’ll help.”

“If I wanted to be sober, don’t you think I would be?” Nick snits, but he does pick up a slice and more or less inhale it. It reminds Harvey of how hungry the Academy kids always were, and he softens. 

“I didn’t know you were drinking again,” carefully; spoken on eggshells. Nick had been so _clean_ their senior year. There was no other way to put it. Harvey remembers him in his sweaters with his neat hair, clear-eyed but somber, angling for Sabrina’s attention until she forgave him. Until it all blew up, for good. 

Nick snorts and leans back. His eyes keep slipping closed, sweat on his temples. His skin is a little translucent, his eyes shadowed, but even so, he doesn’t look bad. “Why not? Who do I have to be good for?”

“Yourself, for one.”

“Ugh.” Nick slumps all the way forward until his head hits the table, which is inadvisable for many reasons, chief among them that Harvey isn’t sure anyone has really cleaned this place since the seventies. “You’re so annoying. You know —” He swoops back up so fast he makes himself dizzy and has to stop, fingertips digging into his hairline. Harvey taps the water bottle again. “You know what? You know what it’s like to — to have to come up against how _good_ you are all the time?”

Harvey’s brow creases. “Huh?”

“How could I not…” His teeth sink into the inside of his lip, jaw jutting forward. Bitterly, “Her picture perfect first love.”

He understands. “Oh. I’m not —”

“If you were the good boy, then I had to be the bad boy.” Nick points at him with one hand while his cheek drops into the other, elbow on the tabletop. “But not too bad, right? Just bad enough to be a turn-on, but not — not anything else, not hurt, not — but this is who I am, right? This is me, I don’t — I’m the one who takes my clothes off and messes around with anyone who’ll have me, and anyone will, right? So why should I pretend to be any different?”

“You’re whoever you decide to be,” Harvey tells him honestly. They’ve moved onto the next phase: confessional. He’s learned way more about his family, and his parents’ less than perfect marriage, than he wanted to in the confession stage. “Drink some water. You’re not making a lot of sense.”

But Nick is on a roll now. “I don’t _need_ her,” comes out quick and sharp, like he has to say it while he still dares to. “I exist outside of her. She doesn’t own me. I can do whatever I want.”

“Sure you can,” Harvey says with an easy dip of his chin. “How about drinking some water?”

“She doesn’t care, so why should I?” Nick continues stubbornly, but he swallows a mouthful of lukewarm water, which Harvey celebrates as a victory. “I don’t care. I don’t care what she’s doing out there — with _him.”_

_I met someone_ , Sabrina had written in one of her cardinal-delivered letters, script looping and precise as something off the page of a fairytale. _I didn’t mean to. He’s really smart, and funny. You’d like him. He loves art, like you. He’s a sculptor. His name is —_

“Apollyon Porte,” Nick sneers. “What kind of a name is that?” 

“Dunno,” Harvey says idly. “What kind of a name is Nicholas Scratch?”

“A better one than Harvey Kinkle,” he retorts. 

Harvey gives him half a smile, wry and unbothered. “Sometimes I like to imagine her there,” he admits, because it’s after midnight and Nick is drunk and there’s no moratorium on confessing. “I don’t really know what it looks like, so I kind of picture it like Hogwarts or something. This big castle surrounded by trees, ‘cause she’d like that, you know — the wind in the leaves. And maybe all these mysterious things living in the woods she can get into trouble with. Her running around with a million books like you do, sitting in the front of the classroom, making friends, writing papers. Discovering things.” Feeling a little flush of shy embarrassment now, he looks down at his hands. “She sounds happy, so I like to think she’s happy.”

When he lifts his head, Nick is watching him with a steady gaze, not belligerent like Harvey expects, but so deeply sad that Harvey almost has to drop his gaze again. He doesn’t. “Well,” Nick says after a moment, voice strange and caught in his throat. “I suppose anyone’s better than Caliban.”

Harvey barks out a laugh. “Dude, you’d hate whoever she was with.”

“I didn’t hate you,” Nick says stubbornly, which is comical, but he follows it up with, “I liked you from the day I met you. You hated me.” He shrugs. “You were right.”

The part of Harvey’s brain that controls speech fills with static. “No, Nick, I was —” Jealous and insecure. “I didn’t hate you. It was everything that was going on, my brother and —” He wets his lips, clears his throat. Smiles, or tries to, and nudges Nick a little under the table with his shoe. “And you can be kind of a jerk, sometimes.”

Nick sneers, proving Harvey’s point, and kicks him back. He misses completely and hits the booth, which startles a reluctant laugh out of him. “Most people find me very charming.”

“Yeah, _most_.” He pauses. “I regret things I did too, you know.”

Their gazes hold for a moment, but then a commotion at the door pulls focus. A gaggle of jocks pile in, loud and obnoxious, all bumping into each other as they hustle towards the counter, half of them splitting off to commandeer two booths on the opposite side of the room. Harvey tenses, looks closer, and grimaces. Carl. 

“What’s that about?”

Cagey, Harvey shifts in his seat. “What?”

Nick’s head swivels towards Carl, who looks away hastily, caught. Nick turns back, expectant. “That.”

Harvey brushes it off, shrugs. Tugs the hem of his shirt down and regrets not wearing another one. “We knew each other in high school. Ran into each other during our first month here. Didn’t go well.”

Nick’s lips purse as he considers this. “What happened?”

Harvey’s hands curl on the table. He thinks of seeing Carl at the party, clinking beer bottles together, smiling and the relief of smiling, the relief of not being the only one who was lonely. Against his will, he glances over again. “Um.”

Nick’s eyebrows draw down and he looks up, almost demonically mischievous in that moment, blurry with drunkenness. “Harry,” he says, with slow suspicion, like he thinks he’s being sly. “Did you fuck that jock?”

Harvey knows how he would feel if it was him; if someone buried him deep, brushed him off like he was nothing. It would hurt. His mouth opens and he sort of shrugs, but Nick nearly howls laughing before he can say a single word.

“You did! Harry. This is wonderful. This is amazing news. How was it?”

Harvey winces without meaning to, and Nick gives him a theatrical grimace back, eyebrows shooting up and lower lip pulling down to reveal a row of sympathetically clenched teeth. 

“That bad?”

Harvey doesn’t want to be an asshole, so he downplays it. “It was just — kind of awkward.”

Nick perches his chin in his palm so he can study Harvey. “I have to say, I never would have thought.” He picks up another slice. “You’re so virginal I assumed you’d be wearing white to your wedding.”

Harvey throws a crust at him. It pings off Nick’s affronted forehead. “This is one of those times you’re being a jerk.”

Nick smirks. “I didn’t know you liked boys, either. Especially boys like that.” He cranes to look at Carl again, who keeps stealing glances their way that Harvey refuses to meet. Carl is tall, though not quite taller than Harvey, with smooth dark hair parted on one side and dark brown eyes, a full mouth. “Corn-fed and all-American, huh, farm boy?”

Harvey doesn’t know how to answer that. “Shut up.”

That works.

Nick’s eyes glitter. “Was it your first time?”

Harvey points at him, warning, “Stop it.”

Nick relents. Briefly, before asking, “Is that why you and your girlfriend —"

Another topic that Harvey can only edge around: where it all went wrong with Roz. “No,” he interrupts. “I’m not — I mean, I’m —” He knows witches are pretty free when it comes to partners; remembers Roz once asking if Sabrina’s aunt was bisexual and Sabrina blithely saying witches didn’t really use those terms, didn’t have the same mortal hang-ups. “I like, um, both, I guess. Not all mortals do, and there are a few different ways to identify if —"

“I know the word bisexual,” Nick says, licking sauce and grease from his fingers distractingly. “I’m taking Queer Studies.”

“Oh,” Harvey says, flushing. Of course he is.

“And I’m bisexual,” Nick adds.

“Right.” He gets a flash of the ex-Ravenettes’ party, Nick tipping his head back for a kiss from some tall guy, his hand splayed across Nick’s throat. “I sort of knew that.”

“It was never a secret.” Nick starts on his third slice. “Though it wasn’t Sabrina’s favorite thing about me.”

Harvey frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you know I can’t be trusted? I might fuck anyone.”

That puts a sour taste in his mouth. “I don’t think it was that, exactly —”

“You don’t know,” Nick says lightly, and Harvey doesn’t, so he shuts up. Nick sighs. “Not that she was the only one making accusations. It’s not her fault. Mine were just —” He meets Harvey’s eyes, his own so dark, and telling. “More specific.”

Something cold drops into Harvey’s stomach. Nick couldn’t know. He’d have said it outright if he knew. Right? Sabrina couldn’t have told him, because she made Harvey promise he wouldn’t say anything, not even to Roz. And only because it was Sabrina, and because the world was ending at the time, Harvey agreed. 

Harvey says nothing. The pizza is demolished and Nick flicks away the garbage with a nonchalant gesture, baring the table in a tiny rush of casual magic. “Nick!”

“What?” Nick says, then, “Oh, whoops.” 

Harvey rubs the tender bones of his eye sockets and laughs, an aborted tangle of a sound. It makes Nick smile, drunk and loose and pleased to get away with bad behavior. “You’re gonna have to learn to hide that better.”

He wonders how hard Sabrina had to work all those years to keep herself under wraps.

“You could give me tips,” Nick suggests, watching him, a challenge. “Lessons on being an effective mortal.”

“We did that once before,” Harvey answers offhandedly. That didn’t go well, either.

“I promise not to bring your brother’s murderer around for tea this time.”

“Well, that would be a weird thing to do twice.”

Nick gives his own stifled laugh, and Harvey shares it, shaking his head. 

“We’ll see,” Harvey says, which is the best he can do.

Harvey brings Nick back to the dorms and, since he’s still staggering, parks; lets himself be signed in; takes the elevator up; waits leaning against the wall while Nick fumbles his key into the lock. It clicks, but Nick pauses instead of pushing in, his forehead dropping against the imitation wood. “Sometimes,” he says, “I think she only took me back to end it on her terms.”

Harvey sighs. A wave of empathy has him putting a hand on Nick’s shoulder, rubbing across his back to the nape of his neck. “Go to sleep, Nick. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

He doesn’t know if that’s true, but he does know there’s nothing else to be done about it. Nick turns towards him, temple scraping against the door, and the look on his face startles Harvey somehow — his melancholy, and the intensity of it. “Thanks, Harry.”

There it is again: that relief. Knowing you aren’t the only one who’s lonely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can follow my CAOS sideblog for updates [@chillingaudrina](http://chillingaudrina.tumblr.com/), or find me on my main blog [@firstaudrina.](https://firstaudrina.tumblr.com/)


	3. grade components

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick learns about laundry. Harvey spills some secrets.

_How’s your hangover_ , Harvey texts.

An hour passes. He checks his phone and sketches, an illustration of a pop art lamia, a dangerous girl with silver eyes and a long, whipping tail. He starts to feel stupid. He wishes he could delete it, or better yet go back in time and unsend it. They never used magic for anything like that. Trivial bullshit. Everyday embarrassments. 

_Aww_ , Nick says finally, _it’s good to know you care_. He gives Harvey a couple of emojis for his trouble: the face with sunglasses and the martini glass. 

Harvey sends back, _Nerd_. 

On Wednesdays, Frankie stays late for a little off-the-books cash so Harvey can get some extra time in the art studio. But today he sacrifices sketching to go down to Dr. Cee’s and wander the stacks, an indulgence he doesn’t indulge in often. It’s an issue of time: Harvey doesn’t have much of it, and it weighs too heavily on his mind.

It’s impossible to go to Dr. Cee’s without thinking of Sabrina and Roz and Theo. The sound of the bell is Pavlovian; he’s always half-certain he’s going to see one of them whenever he turns a corner. If Hilda Spellman’s serving at the café, she’ll watch him with achingly sympathetic eyes until he makes his way over to say hello and hear some secondhand story about Sabrina. _Oh, you should see her_ , Hilda gushed once with dizzy excitement, and seemed to regret it instantly because of whatever it did to Harvey’s face. 

It’s easier to stick to the standard, the loop of school-home-work that dominates his days, but seeing so much of Nick lately has set off some kind of nostalgia bomb in his brain. He wouldn’t really mind an awkward chat with Sabrina’s aunt right about now.

But Hilda isn’t in today, so she must be helping Ambrose at the mortuary. Harvey scopes out the new comics instead, drinks chai and pours over the big expensive art books with the high-resolution photos. He overhears Dr. Cee talking to someone and figures he’ll say hi as soon as he’s done, but there’s a spike of recognition in his idle eavesdropping. He _knows_ that voice. Poking his head around the bookcase confirms that, yep, it’s Nick.

How is it he went half a year without seeing Nick anywhere at all and now can’t escape him?

“Main and Cranberry, you said?” Nick checks, while making a note in a small notebook. “Are the aisles clearly marked? Do the products come with instruction? Would you say fabric softener is necessary?”

Dr. Cee gears up to give what will surely be a thoughtful and informed speech about fabric softener when he catches sight of Harvey. “Mr. Kinkle!” he exclaimed delightedly. “It’s been much too long! How is your father?”

Harvey accompanies a noncommittal shuffle-step with his most automatic smile. “Good as can be expected,” he says, glancing at Nick, who looks back at the door like maybe he can make a break for it.

“Feels like old times having you boys in here again,” Dr. Cee says, beaming kindly and apparently choosing to forget that Nick and Harvey were never exactly friends. “Have you been seeing much of each other at school?”

“Too much,” Harvey says, and Nick does meet his eyes then, mouth quirking in smothered amusement. “Some might say. Has Nick mentioned that he’s getting into modelling?” 

“ _Anyway_ ,” Nick interjects, before Dr. Cee’s intrigued reaction can culminate in a question, “Thank you so much for the advice, Dr. Cerberus, I very much appreciate it, but I should be off now —”

“You know what!” Dr. Cee perks, finger uplifted like a lightbulb has suddenly gone off in his head. “Mr. Kinkle, could you spare a few?” He claps Nick on the shoulder. “Nick here has been losing the fight with the dorm washing machine, so perhaps you can point him in the right direction at the pharmacy?”

“No, no,” Nick says, hurried, “That’s quite alright —”

Just as Harvey realizes, “ _Fabric softener_.”

“Don’t be embarrassed!” Dr. Cee says, giving Nick a friendly shake. “We all need a little help now and then!” 

Which is how Harvey ends up trailing Nick up and down the aisles of the Greendale pharmacy. 

“I don’t get it,” Harvey says, hands in pockets. “Why do you even need to do laundry? Can’t you just, like, zap your stuff clean?”

With disdain so profound he seemingly can’t bear to give the word voice, Nick mouths, _zap?_

Harvey shrugs. He stands by it.

“Aren’t you always telling me off for using magic around them?” Nick points out, which is annoying because it’s true. “My roommate kept making comments about how he never saw me in the laundry room, did I even have a hamper, how did I afford dry cleaning, why did I never have a dry-cleaning bag — all kinds of nonsense. So I might as well learn.”

Caught in a web of his own making, and not entirely minding that Nick’s response to not knowing something is to find out how it works, Harvey says, “Fair enough.”

“I didn’t intend to get you roped in.”

“I know,” Harvey says absently, perusing the shelf of detergent for one of those dark-clothes-only bottles. Considering Nick’s wardrobe, it seems safer.

“I can do it on my own. Once I get the manual from the library —”

Harvey pauses, hand outstretched. “Manual?” he repeats. “From the library?”

“Well,” Nick says snottily, “when I asked the RA for it, they looked at me like I was crazy, so I’ll have to go elsewhere.”

Harvey stares at Nick, standing there in his long black coat with his arms crossed like a sulky toddler, refusing to make direct eye contact. Even so, he’s luminous like Sabrina is, like all the witches are. A handsome ghoul in the wan lighting of this worn-out old store, a place that’s been serving Greendale since the 1950s and looks it; a creature lost in a conventional world he can’t quite understand. Nick, the most majorly try-hard person Harvey has ever met, is embarrassed. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Harvey says. “I have a couple hours. I’ll walk you through it.” 

He snags the detergent and some dryer sheets, plus a laundry bag and a stain stick. When they get up to the counter, there’s a small display of those big artisanal lollipops, their colors swirling together in strange flavor combinations. His mom used to let him pick out a lollipop at the pharmacy every time they went, and Tommy always did after, so he plucks out two — one for him and one for Nick. As a treat.

Nick studies him carefully, as though Harvey is an equation he’s trying to puzzle out. “Is there something the matter with your father?”

It’s not what Harvey expects. “Why do you ask?”

But he knows. It’s Dr. Cee asking about him; Harvey’s own veiled comments.

“He’s fine,” Harvey adds, after a moment of quiet, and steps aside for Nick to pay. “Everything’s fine.”

Fine enough.

The laundry room is a tiny depressing square at the end of a long hallway. Its linoleum floor is peeling at the corners, and the busted overhead light flickers constantly like it’s about to announce the arrival of a horror movie monster. There are two washers, two dryers, and someone’s wet laundry lumped unceremoniously atop one. “Okay,” Harvey says. “Let’s talk about separating colors.” 

Nick’s clothes are too nice to be thrown into a shitty college washing machine that’s probably been mistreated for the better part of fifteen years and mistreats its contents in return. It’s scuffed and off-color, used to scorching post-party vomit out of polyblend. Nick has all these crisp button-downs made of such fine cotton they’re cool to the touch, and soft sweaters with a fine, tight knit. Even his t-shirts feel shockingly expensive, better made than anything Harvey has ever owned or touched, nicer than the suits he inherited from Tommy. The seams are almost invisible and none of the necklines are pulled out of shape. They aren’t worn to exhaustion. Everything Nick owns is new, and Harvey has to crush another surge of mortification over Nick seeing him in that stupid shirt. 

Harvey dumps all the darks in and is left with one white t-shirt and three button-downs. After a moment’s debate, he piles them back in Nick’s arms. “Not worth it. Magic ‘em. I won’t tell anyone.”

The corners of Nick’s mouth twitch and then he smiles, a proper one, unselfconscious and not at all trying to be charming. He tosses the pile into the air and they vanish, just like that. 

“Show-off,” Harvey says, and Nick’s smile becomes a smirk. He’s on more solid footing now, but Harvey can’t shake the image of him leaning into his dorm room door, too exhausted to hold himself upright. It makes Harvey think about how being busy is sometimes the other side of inaction, two ways of moving through sadness. He thinks of all the ways he fills his time so he can spend as little of it as possible at home, and so he can believe his life’s not a waste. But at night he feels how Nick must have pressing his head against that door, like he’s dumping pennies down a well that never seemed to fill up. “You never did tell me how brutal your hangover was.”

The self-assured air fades, and Nick is back to being the twitchy guy Harvey found at Dr. Cee’s. He slips up to sit on the narrow table that fills the wall between machines and door. “No worse than any other. Once you bounce back from Satanic possession, a little headache doesn’t seem like much.” 

_Did you?_ Harvey wants to ask. _Bounce back?_ Instead he comes over to sit with Nick, uncertain if he’s imagining the way Nick stiffens slightly, fidgets sideways. Maybe he’s just making more space. They look out over the little room with its singular window that serves no purpose, because the glass is too frosted to see out of and it’s barred to discourage mischief. “Partying a lot?”

“What’s it to you?”

“I’m just making conversation, dude.” Harvey’s shoulder lifts and then drops in a shrug. “Kind of impressed you’ve made more of an impression in a month than I have living here my entire life.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Nick relaxes a little. “You’ve got that football player mooning.”

Harvey rolls his eyes. Carl’s ego is bruised, that’s all. “Yeah, not exactly.”

“If you say so.” Nick crosses his legs at the ankle. “Anyway, I’ve been here longer than that. I started over winter. To catch up.”

“Oh, sorry, _two_ months,” Harvey says. “Alright. I gotta ask you something.”

Again, Nick tenses, and Harvey thinks, _I’m not asking for your kidney_. “If you must.”

“Why GCC?” 

“You already asked me that.”

“Yeah, well.” Harvey toys with the tiny hole that’s worn through at the cuff of his flannel, the fabric fraying right on the seam. “I guess it still doesn’t make sense to me. And you seem kind of —”

His eyes slide sideways towards Nick while he figures out how to parse this, since he’s not sure how to say, _I know we’re not friends and we barely know each other, but you seem kind of frantic and weird, and also like you chucked your entire life out the window so you could study basic American literature in a place with sticky floors and gum under the desks. You’re too rare for this. You should be where she is_. 

He could probably salvage some of that, but the words falter when he meets Nick’s raised-eyebrow anticipation. “Um, kind of sad, the other night,” Harvey finishes lamely.

Nick snorts. “If you say so,” he says, light. “I don’t remember anything after the crop top, farm boy.”

With amused incredulity, Harvey says, “You don’t, huh? Someone cast a memory spell on you?”

“Maybe Patrón.”

Harvey snorts. 

The washer chugs and swishes merrily to fill the silence. After a moment, Nick starts to say, “I just wanted —” but he’s interrupted by a sudden wail from outside, then —

A thick Massachusetts accent spills into a bitter diatribe clogged with tears. “I don’t understand why you’re doing this to me!” the girl shrieks. “I’m not acting crazy! I can’t believe you would say that to me when you know about all that stuff with my mom —"

Harvey and Nick look at each other, then lean slowly forward as one to peer out the door. There’s a dip in the hallway right in front of the laundry room, a small nook formed by its doorway and the stairway opposite. It’s apparently the perfect place for a semi-private conversation, which is what the girl sobbing into her phone thinks she’s having. 

Harvey checks the washer; fifteen minutes until they have to change it. “Snack run?”

“Unholy horrors, please,” Nick says fervently. 

They go down to the small store on the first floor of the building, which is packed with a truly impressive amount of unhealthy snack options for a five-by-five room with minimal shelving. It has a freezer from which Harvey fishes a pint of chocolate chip cookie dough before nudging Nick over to the chip rack. Nick stares at all the bright shiny bags the same way Harvey might look at a gaggle of demons: confused, faintly terrified, and just a little bit curious.

“Mortal food is wild,” Nick breathes.

Harvey glances towards the register, but the work study student behind it has giant headphones on, so he figures they’re good. “C’mon, nerd,” he says, reaching around Nick for a bag of Doritos. “You came a month early to catch up and you still don’t know anything?” He tsks on his way to the register. Grabs two plastic spoons from the display. “Pay the man.”

Nick eyes him with a hint of a smirk before swaggering up to do just that.

By the time they make it back upstairs, the dramatic phone call girl is frantically making out with another girl in the stairwell. “Congrats!” Nick calls. Harvey shoves him back into the laundry room.

They switch the clothes over to the dryer after an important lesson about lint traps and then sit back on the table. Harvey pops open the chips, but gives Nick’s hand a gentle push away from the lid of the ice cream. “You have to let it melt a little,” he explains.

“You’re very bossy,” Nick tells him, but in such a mild, considering way that it makes the hairs prickle on the back of Harvey’s neck.

Pointedly, he says, “There are rules. Didn’t you want tips?”

“Wanted something,” Nick says easily, watching him, and Harvey has to look out the window that can’t be looked out of. “Now I have to ask you something.”

“If you gotta,” Harvey says. 

“You have to tell me about the jock.”

He laughs, shakes his head. “That’s not a question.”

“What happened with the jock, Harry?”

Like incentive, Nick puts a hand over the pint and does something, red glowing briefly under his palm, so it’s a little soupy when he pulls the top off. Then he whirls his fingers to produce a flask from nowhere, holding it aloft in question. 

Harvey wavers. He doesn’t drink much, just a beer now and then, because it feels like a betrayal of something, some inner boundary he set before he knew he was doing it.

But he never gets to do anything normal. He never gets to do anything _fun_.

He nods, and Nick tips booze into the ice cream. They each stick a spoon in. “You know,” Harvey says conversationally. “Interesting that you don’t remember anything, but you remember _all_ about Carl —”

“Harry. Get to the point.”

_Uh-huh_ , he thinks. “There’s nothing to tell. We — hooked up or whatever you want to call it, and it wasn’t…really anything to write home about.”

Harvey got through one semester of Greendale Community College by the skin of his teeth. He was canvas stretched so tightly over the frame that the wood cracked; unable to take care of his dad and keep up with schoolwork, bitter and panicked and without a friend to have his back. That was why he went to the party, end of his second month at GCC. That was where he saw Carl.

They were both left behind and a little sore about it, looking for a friendly face and no longer feeling the specific social pressure of the Baxter High hierarchy. They said hello and had a drink, then another, catching up without too much detail. Carl had a tiny rainbow flag pin on the lapel of his denim jacket and Harvey was happy for him, that here he felt like he could take that step. He wasn’t bothered when Carl kissed him. He went along with it because he was sad and lonely, and maybe he wanted to be wanted by someone he knew, even if he didn’t feel anything for Carl in particular. 

He wanted — touch, another person’s hands on him. He always thought sex should be more noble or important than that, but that’s the only part he still aches over. The warmth of someone else’s hand on his chest. 

And maybe he wanted to know what it would be like with a guy, finally. He hadn’t had much luck with girls. Turns out he just hasn’t had much luck.

“We were at one of the off-campus houses, at this party,” Harvey finds himself saying. “We went upstairs to some stranger’s bedroom and — I don’t know. It was like we had no idea what to do with each other.”

Harvey felt bad about it then and he feels bad about it now; that he was selfish, that he knew he didn’t like Carl and went through with it anyway. Because of that, he must’ve overcompensated a little, came on too strong or too fake. One thing didn’t work, and then another, and his hollow enthusiasm rang like an echo in an empty room. 

“After, there was just this…silence,” he remembers. The ice cream is a strange, sweet burn in his mouth. The light flickers above them. “I didn’t know what to say, I think I apologized or something cringey. And he got dressed and left.”

Nick is frowning. 

“So that’s why, when you say he’s —” The thought is embarrassing, the word more so. “Mooning, or whatever. He’s not. He blew me off after that. I don’t know why he was looking at me so much the other night, cause he’s not — not interested.”

Nick’s head tilts. “Are you?”

Harvey hesitates and feels so, so bad. He shakes his head. 

“That’s why,” Nick says. “He likes you but he knows you don’t like him, and it’s killing him.”

His snort is snider than he thought he was capable of. “Yeah, Carl’s hung up on a shitty one-night stand with a loser from high school. I’m so sure.”

Nick’s eyes narrow. “If it didn’t go well,” he says, “sounds like it’s his own fault.”

Harvey half-heartedly rolls his eyes, waving a hand. “It isn’t anyone’s fault.” When Nick is unmoved, “C’mon, Casanova. It’s been great for you every single time? Never had a mediocre night?”

Nick smirks and Harvey laughs, even though Nick is an asshole. 

“Well, not all of us can say the same. Some of us only have mediocre nights.”

Nick’s attention is caught again. “What do you mean? What about Roz?”

Harvey isn’t sure where it’s coming from, the odd intimacy of two people alone in an unfamiliar room, tipsy off spiked ice cream. It feels confessional-hushed in here. Harvey gets why that girl chose it for her call.

Still, he glances up at Nick wryly, spoon in his mouth. “I thought you could only ask me one thing.”

“I never agreed to those terms.” Unthinkingly, Nick reaches across to press the edge of his sleeve to the corner of Harvey’s lips, wiping away a smudge of vanilla that leaves a streak on the dark fabric. “Should’ve set your parameters ahead of time, farm boy.”

Harvey’s pulse presses the gas pedal. “So, what, you want my sexual biography?” 

He swallows, feels stupid about the way the word _sexual_ tripped over his tongue. 

Nick pokes into the bag of chips — and Nick Scratch eating Doritos is an incredible sight — and throws out, “I don’t know, sounds like a pretty sad book.”

Harvey punches his shoulder, and earns a grin. “Shut up.”

He isn’t as precious about sex as he was before he had it, and it makes him wistful for the younger version of himself who had his fingers crossed for true love and accepted no substitutes. His book turned out short and not exactly thrilling; Harvey has been with two very different people, one he thought he loved and one he knew he didn’t, and he still never found what he was looking for.

“Do you know about Lupercalia?” Nick asks suddenly, leaning back, as out of left field as anything else he could have said. Harvey does not; Nick tells him. Harvey is instantly nostalgic for ten minutes earlier, when he didn’t know what Lupercalia was. “I lost my virginity at my very first one. It was just a couple of months after my Dark Baptism. I was paired with Prudence, and — what?”

Harvey goggles, and cannot help it. “Prudence was your first?” At Nick’s nod, “That’s _terrifying_.” 

He laughs, agrees, “It was. And exciting. Too exciting — I think I lasted ten seconds.” His expression is softly sardonic and a little self-effacing; he throws his hands up, like, _what can you do?_ “A real two-pump chump. She would only let me go down on her for a month after that — and she wouldn’t coach me either, I had to figure it out myself. She said she would only fuck me again once I’d made her come enough times to make up for the first. Never let me live it down.”

Harvey can’t really imagine a world that Nick didn’t stumble into fully formed, with all the answers already, so much esoteric knowledge and a skill for flirting his way into trouble, then out of it again. “Really?”

“Cross my heart, farm boy. Ask her sometime. She’d love an excuse to tell the story.”

It’s like the booze: there’s a moment where it could go either way, where Harvey could give up or give in. He finds his voice before he’s really made up his mind. “I couldn’t,” he admits. “Make Roz — you know. I never could.” 

Heat suffuses his face and his throat clutches, but under the pink of humiliation is a kind of relief at finally saying this to someone, because he never did, not even to Theo. Barely in his own head. He just carried it around inside him, a stupid little shame. 

Nick’s expression draws into something quizzical but, thankfully, the dryer buzzes right then. Harvey is glad of the excuse to get up and look busy, hiding his burning face behind the door of the machine as he sticks a hand in and finds Nick’s heavy clothes slightly damp, still. Closes it, turns the dial for another twenty minutes, presses the button. Runs it again. Stays over there, distance between them, where it’s safe. 

It’s a good instinct, because the next thing Nick says is, “Did you use your tongue?”

“Jesus, Nick.” Harvey blows out a breath. “Yeah. Yes.”

“Did you use your fingers? You have good hands. Did you —"

“ _Nick_ ,” Harvey says, again, stressed. He leans against the dryer and crosses his legs, hands clasped in front of him. Wonders if he can casually shrug off his jacket and hold it there.

Nick pushes forward, perched on the precipice of the table and holding still, fingers tented on its surface and feet firm on the ground. His eyes, sober and analytical, are too much to take. “It’s just a chapter. Everyone has a first chapter." 

It’s a kind thing to say, even if it also makes Harvey feel pathetic. “Thanks for the platitude, Scratch.”

The sharpness has the inverse effect, in that Nick sparks with delight. “Anytime, Kinkle,” he says. “Would you like another? There are many flies in the web. What doesn’t kill you makes you able to withstand more complex curses. When life hands you a virgin, make a blood sacrifice to an ancient deity in exchange for power. Time is meaningless and soon your enemies will be dust.”

“Are those real?” Harvey says. “What is wrong with witches?”

Nick grins and allows, “A lot.” Then, “Would you like me to curse your jock for you? I can make it so he disappoints all his lovers for a year and a day.”

“I don’t think he needs your help for that,” Harvey says, which makes Nick really laugh and Harvey’s cheeks go pink again, though this time not from shame. “And he’s not, you know. Mine. But, uh, it’s the thought that counts?”

“It’s the intention that makes the spell,” Nick says, nodding sagely. 

Harvey snorts and shakes his head, just as the dryer goes off again. He checks it, and then the time. “I should go,” he says. Frankie would be leaving soon. “I’m not folding your clothes for you, Scratch.”

“Of course, you’ll just wash and dry them,” Nick teases. Harvey rolls his eyes, because that…is true, and therefore annoying. Nick slips off the table and pauses, doesn’t come closer. “Maybe we could do this on purpose, sometime.”

Harvey looks at him. “Laundry?”

Nick shrugs. “Or whatever.”

He clears his throat. “Yeah, sure,” spoken indifferently, but his hands flexing, a curl and release that seems to tingle. “Whatever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can follow my CAOS sideblog for updates [@chillingaudrina](http://chillingaudrina.tumblr.com/), or find me on my main blog [@firstaudrina.](https://firstaudrina.tumblr.com/)


	4. required materials

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joke’s on Harvey, but it usually is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friendly reminder: Parts 1 - 3 are canon for this story; Part 4 is not. The tie-in novels are also canon, so this will reference them occasionally.

Panic sets in about an hour after Harvey gets home. 

He can’t believe he told Nick all of that. He can’t believe he said those words, out loud, with his own mouth, in a public place where people could hear him, and where the person who _did_ hear him was Nick Scratch. _I couldn’t make Roz — you know_ , and he couldn’t even say the word, a word Nick probably knew in six languages and three of them demonic. _Went upstairs to some stranger’s bedroom_ , god. What possessed him? 

With his dad once again parked in front of the TV, Harvey starts in on the dishes and spirals. He submerges his hands in soapy water up to the wrist and wonders if it’s deep enough to drown in. He’s going to see Nick in class and Nick will know that he couldn’t make Roz come; that Carl was so impatient with his inexperience that he decided Harvey wasn’t worth the time; that everything Nick assumed about Harvey was pretty much true. He’s just this lumbering mess of a mortal, not spectacular or even especially good at anything, and meanwhile Nick is so stellar that girls don’t even care if he knows their names. Joke’s on Harvey, but it usually is. 

What if Nick brings it up? Harvey wouldn’t put it past him. _Did you use your tongue_ reverberates in his head, and then he remembers the laundry manual and has a sudden horrifying vision of Nick slapping down the _Kama Sutra_ or _The Joy of Sex_ or something else horrible on Harvey’s desk in front of their entire American Lit group. He would think he was helping ( _did you use your fingers?_ ) when all he was doing was —

Harvey hisses and jerks his hand out of the water. Blood rises in a thin line along the meat of his palm and then bubbles over, a slim stream of red sliding down his wrist and dripping into the sink like a leaky faucet, _plop plop plop_. He must’ve caught the wrong end of a knife groping around for the next dish; wouldn’t be the first time. He barely even felt it.

He rinses the scratch under fresh water and presses a paper towel to it while he rifles in the junk drawer for a band-aid. He finds a small good-luck sachet from Sabrina from who knows when, cheesecloth crinkling with old dry herbs, and he thinks of how she would drip strange tinctures onto wounds, pack burns with oddly scented poultices. Every injury he ever got healed so much quicker and cleaner under Sabrina’s hands. 

Harvey tries to remember any of the herbs, but that kind of stuff never stuck in his head unless he drew it first, which at least gives him an idea for her birthday present: a hand-drawn herbal encyclopedia. No, that’s dumb; she probably already has nicer ones, bought off the third ring of Saturn in the fifteenth century, or whenever. 

Something yellow, maybe, or something that sounded like _yellow_. He pokes through the spice rack on a whim, wistful. Turmeric? He’s going to give himself an infection if he gets too creative, and that makes him laugh, shaking his head. He hefts the good luck charm from hand to hand, holds it against his wound even though a little blood is starting to seep through. He leans all the way over to rest his forehead against the edge of the sink, feeling it dig in keenly. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.

“God. Whoever’s listening.” Harvey sighs. “I wish someone would stop me the next time I’m about to say something stupid.”

He straightens up and starts, because there’s a pair of yellow eyes with slit pupils watching him from the dark beyond the kitchen window. Harvey grins. He reaches up to unlatch it and lift Salem off the sill, setting him on Harvey’s shoulder like he likes. “Hey, buddy,” Harvey says warmly. “Long time no see.”

Salem gets himself settled, kneading the front of Harvey’s shirt a little and digging his claws in until he gets his bearings. He meows loudly. 

“I bet,” Harvey agrees. He feels bad about not being able to understand Salem and he knows how cats are, so he figures agreeing’s safe. “Wanna see this week’s assignment?”

Salem comes by sometimes, not a lot but every so often. Just checking in. He’ll hang around while Harvey does homework or draws, threading between his feet or scaling his shoulders, getting in the way and trying to steal bites of Harvey’s food. 

Case in point: Salem meows insistently and butts his head against the side of Harvey’s neck. “Okay, okay,” he says, laughing. “Snacks first.” 

Harvey ducks into the GCC library on his break, chasing warmth; the beginning of February brings with it a certain kind of bitter frost, and even his Sabrina-enchanted jacket is finding its limits tested. He shakes snow flurries out of his hair and looks up to see — well, who else?

Nick is facing away from him, but Harvey recognizes him anyway; something about the way he stands shoulders-squared with his messenger bag strapped across his chest. He’s in the lobby by the bulletin board, at the table with all the pamphlets about upcoming events and school clubs, support groups or whatever else. He’s absorbed in a tri-folded brochure printed on computer paper, but Harvey can’t see what it is. 

Harvey approaches warily, old boots squelching and squeaking on a floor stained with snow run-off and rock salt. All he has to say is, _Hey, remember what we talked about? Could you possibly take that to your grave, and also never mention it to me again? Maybe erase the whole thing from both of our memories?_

No. That would be a bad joke to make.

He clears his throat and gets such a glare from the librarian that he thinks his stealth operation is spoiled, but when he ventures, “Nick?” sotto voce, Nick crushes the pamphlet with an involuntary flinch.

“Harry, are you stalking me?” he asks, but his voice sounds weird, stuck in his throat. He tucks the crumpled paper into his pocket.

“No, but it really seems like it, doesn’t it?” Harvey’s head tilts. “You okay?”

“I’m just having a look at extracurriculars.”

Wryly, “Because you’re not taking enough classes?”

Nick’s eyes crinkle with not-quite-a-smirk. “I was thinking of trying out for the spring musical.” He snatches a hot pink flyer and waves it. “Heard of it?”

Harvey has to catch Nick’s wrist to even read what the flyer says. “ _The Rocky Horror Picture Show?_ Dude, of course. It’s only one of the best movies ev— Wait. Have _you_ not heard of it?”

Nick shrugs. Harvey stares at him, horrified. 

“Dude,” he says. “We need to fix that. You gotta see it. Especially if you’re gonna try out.”

Nick starts to smile. “Are you asking me to the movies, farm boy?”

Harvey huffs and resists rolling his eyes. “ _No,_ I —”

The seam of Harvey’s bag splits suddenly open, spilling books and sketchpads and pencils and, oh god, the creaky old laptop. It hits the ground with a resounding crash, drawing the attention of everyone in the vicinity — and the ire of the librarian. Harvey puts his hand over his face. 

“Oh, don’t be a baby, Harry.” There’s laughter buried in Nick’s voice, which is coming from somewhere around Harvey’s knees; then the rustle of papers gathered. “Not that many people are looking. Just this floor — oh, no, wait, some people are looking over the balustrade. Alright, nevermind.”

Harvey snorts and bends down to help. “You don’t have to —”

Nick thrusts the pile of his possessions at him. “Do you want me to fix your bag?”

He hesitates, but, “Yeah, actually. I’d really appreciate it.”

They step outside, hovering in the shelter of one of the building’s many overhangs so Nick can fuse the busted seam closed with magic. Between them, they dump all of Harvey’s stuff back into his bag. Snow is still falling in a wet, distracted way; melting before it has a chance to land. The campus has a wan look from the wash of white cloud above, and Nick stands out sharply against it with his black hair and black coat. Harvey holds onto the image for a second, fingers already feeling it out on paper.

Without anyone else around to hear, he can say, “Hey, uh, Nick. Can I ask you something?” At Nick’s nod, “I was wondering if we could, um.” Harvey’s teeth scrape against the inside of his lip. “Keep what we talked about between us? You know, in the laundry room.”

_I couldn’t make Roz —_

He violently quashes the voice in his head. 

“Ah.” Nick’s shoulders loosen. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to cancel the skywriter, and throw out the posters I made, and —”

“Fuck off,” Harvey laughs, and Nick grins. 

“Who am I going to tell, Harry?”

And Harvey thinks, _well_ , but he can’t come up with an answer. Every time he sees Nick, he’s alone, or with someone new; people whose names he doesn’t bother to remember. No one had been waiting with him when he was drunk outside that party, to make sure he was safe.

“I know how to keep a secret.” Nick claps Harvey on the shoulder. “Try not to have too much bad luck, hm?” 

His lips pull up at one corner and he goes, striding out into all that white like a slash of charcoal on fresh paper. 

Harvey ends up having a lot of bad luck.

When he’s called on in class and panics because he didn’t do the reading, he stalls with a sip of coffee that somehow goes down the wrong way, resulting in such a fit of hacking that he’s dismissed to the hallway until it’s under control. The strap of his bag snaps when the girl from art class tries to talk to him in the caf, and he has to tie it in an awkward knot that his fingers can’t stop worrying. Professor Greenleaf singles out his work for the class to observe, drawing their attention to his use of space, and when Harvey shrugs off the praise, he also slides off his stool to the floor as though someone had kicked it out from under him. 

Harvey has gotten used to a certain level of everyday embarrassment, but this is something else. There are bad days and then there are bad days in Greendale. It almost feels like — 

_Did you cast a sp_ , is as far as Harvey gets in his text to Nick before his phone shivers and dies in his hands. It gives one last melodramatic flicker, like a bad actor milking a death scene, and refuses to turn back on afterwards, no matter how many times Harvey stabs violently at its buttons. He throws it into his bag and runs both hands through his hair, hard, with a sound like a sigh dragged through gravel. 

It’s right then, almost nullified by his grumbling, that he hears a giggle. It’s close and far at the same time, a dream logic laugh that flits within his hearing and vanishes just as fast. 

Harvey whips around, but the quad is nearly empty — just a few humorless students hustling along in the slush. And there on a low brick wall, licking his paws indifferently, is Salem.

Harvey walks over and stares down at the cat. Salem looks back at him coolly, blinking Halloween-orange eyes.

“It wasn’t about the snacks, was it?” he says ruefully. “You were trying to warn me about something.”

Salem meows.

“Yeah, yeah,” Harvey breathes, holding out his arms for Salem to hop into. “Let’s go find Nick.”

Harvey tracks Nick down the old-fashioned way: lurking in his usual haunts and hoping to get lucky. He doesn’t, which is fitting; Nick is everywhere lately, except when Harvey’s actively looking for him.

“Don’t you have some special familiar skill for finding witches?” Harvey asks Salem, who manages to look affronted in response. “Then again, _I’m_ the witch-hunter.”

“Dude.” A guy passing Harvey on his way across campus slows to a stop, utterly baffled. “Did you bring your cat to school?”

“Not my cat,” Harvey says absently, and moves on.

Harvey gives up and goes to Nick’s dorm. “I don’t even know if he’s here,” Harvey explains to the girl behind the desk. “But my phone died and I just really need to talk to him —”

She raises two heavily pierced eyebrows, hand already reaching for the black corded phone sitting in front of her. There’s something astute and entertained and a little perplexed in her expression. “What is it with this guy?” she wonders, dialing. “You’re like the tenth person to turn up looking for him this semester. Hit it and quit it, huh?”

Harvey flushes and frowns. “He wishes,” he snaps, which is so impossibly stupid he would like to lay down on the floor until he turns forty, but luckily the phone crackles and whines at that exact moment, so she doesn’t seem to hear him.

“Argh, god, you’d think they’d come up with a better system,” she complains, holding the receiver away from her. “I’ll try again.” She eyes him. “Is your jacket moving?”

Harvey slouches, arms folded on the desk so he’s hidden behind it. “No.”

She gets through on the second go, and after a minute’s conversation (“He’s kind of tall — sheepskin jacket — yeah, no, he’s cute.”) she giggles and covers the phone, says to Harvey, “Lucky you, he’ll be right down.” 

“I’m really,” Harvey mumbles, “really not lucky.”

Eventually the elevator doors open and Nick emerges, smug and nearly purring, “Harry. I had no idea you were so desperate to see me.”

“Actually,” the girl interrupts, “the name on his I.D. is —”

“Must be a mistake,” Nick says easily.

“You’re an ass,” Harvey tells him. “Are we going up or what?”

“You know, farm boy, you were much friendlier this morning.”

Desk Girl blows out an amused breath and busies herself with whatever’s in front of her, humming a little like she’s not still listening. It’s probably good gossip, a funny anecdote to share with her friends later. Harvey can hear it already. _Yeah, you know that lothario on the fourth floor, well, another one turned up today —_

“I’m not,” Harvey says, because he feels like he has to, and because the way Nick said _morning_ dripped with more innuendo than a library run-in implies. “I wasn’t — Can I just talk to you, please?”

Nick puts an elbow on the desk, leaning in towards the girl flirtatiously. “Can you put a little note in there to let Harry up whenever he —”

Harvey grabs a handful of Nick’s lapel and pulls him towards the waiting elevator. Once inside, doors dinging shut, Nick leans back against the wall and smiles at him. “What’s the rush?” he wants to know. “You could have called, you could have texted, but you show up here all in a huff —”

“I couldn’t call, actually.” Harvey unzips his jacket slightly so Salem can poke his head out. Nick startles, recoiling. “There’s a situation.”

Nick narrows his eyes at Salem, who returns the gesture with a hiss. Harvey looks between them.

“Still?”

“I’m just not a cat person.” Nick punches one of the buttons. Suspicion flits across his face as he glances at Salem again. “Or maybe it’s the other way around. So what’s going on?”

Harvey tells him. 

Nick’s roommate isn’t in, which is too bad, because Harvey gets one look at Nick’s side of the room and really wants to extend his condolences. 

The door opens onto a typical college dorm, all rumpled bedding and posters haphazardly tacked onto the walls, that careens sharply into the Gothic. It takes a minute to recognize the basic, sturdy, university-provided furniture under the opulence Nick has draped it in: a quilted satin duvet that sags onto the floor to reveal silk bedding beneath, an ornate rug laid over cheap Berber carpet, a vast painting hung on a surely unapproved wire in a gleaming wooden frame. It’s of a woman in a diaphanous gown thrown backwards off a bed with a snarling demon sitting on her chest. Books balance precariously on the desk and dresser and there are some in the bed, too, leather corners peeking out from underneath Nick’s pillow.

“Oh my god,” Harvey says, stunned. 

“Thank you,” Nick says politely, and then prompts, “You were saying? An uptick in mischief, a disembodied laugh?”

“Yeah…” He tears his gaze away from the black irises of the demon in the painting. “Yeah, right. Right. I wanted to know if you cast a sp—”

That’s when Harvey’s voice goes out like a blown-out lightbulb. His mouth moves and his throat vibrates but there’s no sound behind it. Confused, he tries again, _spell_ , but nothing comes out. Again, _I wanted to know if you_ , but he can’t seem to say anything at all. Panic overtakes him.

“Oh, silly mortal,” Nick breathes. “What did you do?”

He comes close and tilts Harvey’s head this way and that, even looks in his mouth like a doctor. Harvey brushes his hands away, Salem following them both with his orange eyes from within the safe confines of Harvey’s jacket. Harvey gestures wildly, says and expresses nothing, and then sighs, which he can still do. A smile steals over Nick’s face again, like he can’t quite help it.

“You’ve had a day, haven’t you?” he asks, and Harvey nods, rubs a hand over his face. “Well, it certainly seems like someone cast a spell on you.”

Harvey’s hands shoot out emphatically, _yes_. 

“It wasn’t me,” Nick tells him. “I’ve learned my lesson. Are you letting other witches give you trouble? Perhaps it’s best you can’t speak, because if you say that you are, I’ll be terribly heartbroken.” 

Harvey rolls his eyes on a laugh and thinks, _you total jerk_. “No,” he says, and his eyebrows shoot up with surprised pleasure, because there it is, he’s back. “I don’t know what caused it, I just know that today —”

He’s distracted by Salem wriggling free and scaling his shoulder, then trying to shimmy down his arm like a feline tightrope-walker. Harvey holds his arm aloft so Salem doesn’t take a tumble, which is when his gaze is drawn down to the band-aid laid across the cut on his palm. 

His eyes widen.

“Oh, no,” he says, with dawning horror. “Nick, I think I did something.”

“You anointed a good luck charm with your blood and made a wish,” Nick says slowly.

“ _No_ ,” Harvey says, exasperated. “I cut myself by accident and found the charm and said something completely innocuous in the safety of my own kitchen.”

“Mortal. Did you forget where you live?”

Harvey hadn’t, but weirdness had been on the decline after Greendale was taken under the protection of Lilith, queen of Hell. It would never be a normal place to live, but they’d gone more than six months without an apocalypse; Harvey hadn’t had to face down a demon in months, or shoot something undead, or plunge an enchanted dagger into a dark entity. Maybe he got complacent. 

Uneasily, he asks, “What do you think it is? Another, um. Bad luck demon?”

“Perhaps. I’m not entirely sure, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to find out. A simple summoning and a general wish reversal. I just need a couple of things.”

“Like what?”

Nick smiles. “Your blood.”

Nick teleports them to Harvey’s, something he tries to resist but can’t. Nick says he needs to be near where the ritual (“Oh my god, it was not a ritual, stop calling it that!”) was performed, and apparently his roommate has already caught him getting freaky with candles one too many times (“I was not _getting freaky_ , why is it those who are the most repressed are also the most perverse?”). Harvey directs him to the garage instead of the house, cranking up the space heater while Nick releases an armful of candles onto the rug. Salem curls up on one of the couches.

“I need salt and the charm you used,” Nick says, reaching into his blazer to pull out a small sharp knife, like a bejeweled letter opener with nefarious intent. “Oh, and a cup of water. Hop to.”

Harvey raises both eyebrows and stares at him.

“If you please,” Nick adds, and smiles up at him, a smile that has probably gotten him out of as many scrapes as it’s gotten him into. Harvey is unmoved, but he does want to get this over with, so he’s going into the house either way. Still, he makes sure to grumble and give Nick a dark look as he heads out, which has exactly no effect.

“If _I_ please,” Harvey mutters. “Exactly.”

Inside, he makes small talk with Frankie about being home early — “school project” seems to cover a number of bases — and casts apprehensive glances out the back window while he gets everything together. But he can’t find the charm, which had apparently not made its way back into the drawer. He’s peering under the table when his dad comes into the kitchen, leaning his weight against the doorframe. “School project, my ass,” he gets out gruffly. “You’re skipping. You gonna waste time at that place, might as well waste it _there.”_

It’s amazing how clear his dad can be when he’s criticizing him. “Yeah, yeah, I can’t do anything right,” Harvey mutters. He hates having this conversation with someone else in the house and Nick outside, a spotlight shined on their dysfunction.

Undeterred, his dad goes on, so much effort put into every word that it’s too bad Harvey can’t appreciate it. “You’re throwing money away when you could be taking on more at the mines, like you’re supposed to —”

“Rich, why don’t you take a seat,” Frankie sighs. She gives Harvey a look of wry understanding, but he doesn’t want it; he’d rather get out of here as soon as he can. “Let the boy get on with his business.”

“Business,” his dad snorts. “Yeah, all that important time-wasting —" 

“You’re drunk,” Harvey says bluntly, letting himself stand at his full height for once, still and steady in the center of the kitchen. “And you want to talk to me about wasting time?”

“Hey now —” his dad starts, but Harvey’s stopped listening. Dad won’t even remember this in the morning. He’ll adhere to his all-important schedule of getting shitfaced and bullying Frankie, then waxing morose until he falls asleep. 

“I’ll be out of your way in a minute.” Finally, Harvey spots it — the sachet sitting on the windowsill, where he’d set it down so he could pick up Salem. He snags it by one dangling ribbon and turns to go. Comes face to face with Nick in the doorway.

Bad goddamn luck.

Gears are turning in Nick’s expression as he collects evidence and puts it together in his quick-witted way: the woman in scrubs, Harvey’s dad leaning on the cane he only uses under duress, the beer bottle on the arm of the chair, the slight lag in the way his father moves.

“I forgot,” Nick says carefully, dark eyes finding Harvey. “I need some honey, and twine if you have it. Hello.” He extends a hand towards Frankie with that easy handsome smile of his, the one that hides all manner of sin. “Not used to seeing such a lovely lady in the Kinkle house.”

Harvey circumvents their introduction by sticking his hand into Nick’s and pulling him backwards. “Nick, Frankie; Frankie, Nick, now can we —"

“You’ve never been in my house.” His dad evaluates Nick with preemptive disapproval and perhaps a hint of muddled recognition.

“It’s Nick, Dad, you’ve met him,” Harvey says, though he’s not sure how much his dad actually retained from that meeting. “He went out with Sabrina after me. We go to school together.”

“I would say it was a pleasure,” Nick says, chilly. “But it really was not.”

Nick’s fingers flex in Harvey’s hold and he becomes aware of how he’s hanging onto Nick in front of his dad; shifts his grip up Nick’s sleeve and tugs again. “I’ll get the stuff, just go to the garage,” he says quietly, and whatever’s in his voice makes Nick nod, and slink off. Harvey can sense his dad watching him too closely and it makes his throat tight, but Frankie corrals him back into the living room and he starts arguing with her instead. _Everyone treats me like I can’t do a goddamn thing, I don’t even need you here, more money down the drain._

Harvey feels bad about that, but not so bad he doesn’t slip outside as soon as he can.

Nick wastes half the salt on a circle with a star inside it, each point lit by a white candle, with the cup of water in the middle. He opens the charm and tips some of its contents into the palm of his hand, makes a considering noise, and sprinkles them into the cup so they float eerily on the still surface of the water. 

He has not asked about Harvey’s father. 

“What did you say exactly? When you summoned it.” 

Harvey doesn’t want to tell him, because it’ll make him sound lonely, and he is lonely. “I didn’t _summon_ anything.”

Nick rolls his eyes. “Fine, what did you say when you _accidentally_ through _no fault of your own_ said magically significant words over a magically imbued object with blood all over it?”

_“Whoever’s listening,”_ Harvey mutters, staring at his hands, dusted with graphite along the sides of his fingers. “I said, _whoever’s listening, I wish you’d stop me next time I say something stupid.”_

Nick’s head tilts slowly to the side, curious. “You say so many stupid things, why the sudden concern?” But before Harvey can respond with snark, Nick realizes; of course he does. “Ah. The laundry room confessions. Are you that embarrassed?” 

Automatically, “Yes.” 

“But I told you, it’s nothing to —”

“It’s not the kind of thing I talk about.” Not with anybody; barely with himself. Harvey averts his gaze, but it doesn’t help because they’re sitting directly across from each other, just a foot or two of mystical ritual-space between them. “And I know what you think of me. You’re this cool warlock and I’m some stupid, pathetic mortal who can’t even —” 

Can’t hold onto anyone, not even for a night.

“Harry,” Nick says patiently. “Did you not scrape me off the floor of a college party and feed me pizza in the middle of the night while I drunkenly whined about my ex-girlfriend?”

He does have a point there. “I thought you didn’t remember that.”

Nick shifts. “I don’t,” he says. “I merely assume that’s what happened.”

The corner of Harvey’s mouth curls up and he gives Nick a sidelong glance. “You’re right. You’re definitely not cool, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Nick says. “I am obviously still extremely cool.”

Harvey laughs. _“Nerd,”_ he says, with feeling. “Can we do your dumb little spell, or what?”

Nick hums a little. “You know, wishes are very dangerous. You should never make one if you don’t know who’s listening. And perhaps if someone is offering to help you —”

“Nick.”

A small and close smile. “Hand,” Nick says, and holds out his own so Harvey can lay his in it, palm-up. It doesn’t feel like anything, just hands, Nick’s cool and dry and Harvey’s much too warm. He hopes Nick doesn’t think he’s nervous, hopes his skin doesn’t feel clammy or gross. Nick doesn’t say anything about it, only pulls out a little blue vial and shakes it, starts to nudge the cork out. Harvey draws back instinctively, but Nick holds on. “It’s just so it won’t hurt when I prick your finger.”

“I can take it.”

Nick’s eyebrows raise. “Why should you have to?”

Harvey swallows, fingers curling in. He can feel the heat coming off the candles, surprisingly searing against the underside of his arm. “I’m not a kid, I can handle a tiny cut on my finger.”

“Yes, you’re being very mature about it.”

“Witches do it all the time, don’t you?”

“We also have a considerably different relationship to pain than mortals, which I’d be happy to tell you about if I didn’t think your blush would set you on fire.”

Harvey flushes. “Why do you always have to —"

“Done.” Nick smiles at him. He had punctured the pad of Harvey’s finger without him even noticing, and now turns his hand so the blood can drip into the water. Three drops. “Something to be said for mortal methods, I suppose.”

He spreads a drop of honey over Harvey’s fingertip, viscous and strange, sticky and ruby-red from the blood beneath. Then he ties a length of twine at Harvey’s first knuckle, not tightly; to bind, he says. “How long do I have to leave this on?” Harvey wonders, holding his hand out awkwardly, and gets an unimpressed look in response. 

There’s still an unease around magic, for Harvey. It feels so alien. He can’t really touch it and has nothing to compare it to, except maybe art. The only thing that’s higher than him is the ability to create something from nothing, but even magic is startlingly beyond that, too vast and wild to comprehend. It’s like walking in the woods forever but being inside every root and sapling and skittering insect; it’s like being the wind.

Well. Harvey thinks it might be like that, anyway.

Nick’s face changes when he gets into it. His head tips back and his shadows seem to deepen; the planes of his face become more striking but somehow fiendish, an unearthly edge to all that ostentatious handsomeness. His voice is a steady drone of words Harvey doesn’t know in a language he doesn’t speak, and it makes Harvey think of him keeping the Greendale Thirteen at bay, fighting off the army of the dead that crashed their senior prom. Watching Sabrina do magic was like staring into a bonfire; Nick is the flint.

But then, all of a sudden, he laughs. One eye opens to peer at Harvey. “Farm boy,” he says. “You’re being pestered by an imp.”

Another odd wayward giggle tickles the shell of Harvey’s ear, the same as in the quad that afternoon. If he squints, he can just make out the zip of a small shadow from one corner of the garage to another. Salem lifts his head to hiss, but doesn’t otherwise stir from his sprawl.

“An imp,” Harvey repeats.

“Lowest of the low, demon-wise,” Nick says cheerfully. “The errand boys of the underworld. But if they aren’t tasked with anything, they like to bother mortals. They want attention, human friendship. We just have to retract your wish and then a routine banishing should —”

“Wait.” Harvey tries to catch sight of the imp, but it’s like spotting a mosquito before it can bite you. “What do you mean?”

“It’s sort of like pulling your pigtails. They play pranks to get people to notice them. Incredible annoying, but imp infestations are fairly commonplace. It can be taken care of with an incantation.”

“No, hold on a minute.” Harvey sits up, hands in his lap, which — great, honey on his jeans. He ignores that. “Hey, little imp dude? Maybe we can work something out. A trade — you can forget about my wish, but it’s cool if you want to hang around sometimes. Is there anything you like?”

Nick stares at him. “Are you trying to make friends with an infernal imp?”

“You said that’s what it wanted,” Harvey says defensively. It was probably lonely, too. “It was trying to help. It was just doing the only thing it knew how to do.”

Nick scoffs, shaking his head. “Oh, imps, zombies, ghosts, familiars — you’re a regular crusader for the dredges of magical society.”

Before Harvey can address that, there’s another distant chortle and the record player turns on. There isn’t a record in it, but the light is blinking, and it makes a soft electric whir. “Oh,” Harvey says, catching on with a smile. “Do you like music?”

While Nick splutters, Harvey goes over to the record crates. “If you want,” he tells the imp, glancing up towards the rafters and hoping for the best, “You can use the record player whenever you want, as long as you’re careful and don’t break anything. I can’t really afford to replace it.”

“Are you serious,” Nick says.

“Here, I’ll get you started.” Harvey slides _Live Through This_ out of its sleeve and sets it on the platter, shifting the needle over slowly so the imp can see how it’s done. It starts to spin, Courtney Love singing, _and the sky was made of amethyst_. “Deal?”

Another snicker, and all the candles go out. Harvey figures it’s a deal.

“I cannot believe you,” Nick says. 

Harvey grins at him. “I think they like it.”

When Nick is done grumbling about Harvey and his new best friend the imp — actually, while he’s still in the middle of it — he starts poking around the record crates. There are six in total, a collection inherited from Harvey’s parents and brother, added to with care and consideration over the years. Dr. Cee would set aside special arrivals until Harvey could save up for them, and sometimes gave him a staff discount if he could sense Harvey’s particular attachment. When he protested, Dr. Cee would say, _you were almost staff, and I owe you for all that wonderful art_ , in a way that made it hard to argue, especially because Harvey didn’t really want to argue. 

He keeps them arranged by who they belonged to: one crate is his dad’s classic rock, another is Tommy’s country, a third is his mom’s Linda Ronstadt and Kate Bush. Listening to them is a way of being close that he can stand, on days when he can’t stand much else.

“I keep meaning to put up better shelves or something.” Harvey sucks on his finger for a second, the taste of blood and honey. “When I have the time.”

“Mm.” Nick turns over _Rumours_ to peruse the back, then adds it to what Harvey has deemed his Curiosity Pile. “Can we try something else, or will your best friend the imp be offended?”

Harvey smothers a smile. “I don’t know, why don’t you ask them?”

Nick rolls his eyes and pulls another crate over, one of Harvey’s. He feels a shiver of danger, the personal stakes of Nick seeing something indisputably his. Nick flicks through a few and then his interest piques, eyebrow raising. He shows Harvey the cover of the _Rocky Horror_ soundtrack, it’s scrapbook-style cut-and-paste screengrabs; the illustrated glitter of its title. “Is this…?”

“Oh, yeah.” Harvey reaches for it. “Yeah.” He slips it from its sleeve carefully and balances it between his fingers; the record itself is an abstract swirl of colors, red and white and purple. It was a special pressing, too expensive, that Roz got him for his birthday before they broke up. It’s almost more special because of that, because it came right before the end. “Here, let me —”

The opening strains of “Science Fiction/Double Feature” are a pressure-release, the immediate comfort of a song that lives in his bones. Something he’s idly plucked on his guitar a million times. “We could watch it, I have it,” he says. “But you kinda have to get the whole experience. It’s not like a regular movie, you know? People dress up and they shout stuff out, sing along. It’s really fun.”

Nick comes over to stand next to him, his arm just brushing Harvey’s.

“There’s a bigger musical theatre scene in Riverdale,” Harvey continues. “Maybe we could find a showing there.”

Last time he’d gone was the summer before junior year, a special showing at the Paramount. They were all so excited about it because there had never been one in town before. No one dressed up except for the four of them — Harvey and ‘Brina as Brad and Janet, Roz as Magenta, and Theo as Columbia, though he said later he really wanted to be Eddie. They had a blast, shouted and sang and threw popcorn. Harvey sang Sabrina all the way home, playacting scenes up the road to her house. 

_Hey, Janet?_ whispers the record player. _Yes, Brad?_

“I’d like that,” Nick says.

“You can decide who you want to audition for,” Harvey says, and has no one but himself to blame for the instant mental image of Nick in gold shorts. They’d bend the rules on the blonde thing for Nick. “You — you sing, right?”

Nick was in the choir, way back when. Harvey smiles, remembering that. Nerd. 

“Not in a while,” Nick admits. “Might be nice to, again.”

“Yeah,” Harvey encourages. “You should.”

In that mellow moment, Harvey is tempted to apologize, again, for what happened in high school. For telling Nick to take the memories of their five-day friendship; for erasing him. He isn’t totally sure where the impulse comes from. Apologizing hadn’t gone well the first time he tried. 

He opens his mouth to say _something_ , though he’s not sure what yet, but Nick beats him to the punch.

“Your father,” he starts, and trails off. “That’s why you stayed, isn’t it? Gave up on your fancy art program.”

Harvey sighs. He was hoping not to get into it. “Yeah.”

“What happened?”

Reeling off the details is actually easy, because they’re simple and factual and could have happened to anyone. “There was an accident in the mines, and he got injured,” Harvey says. “A concussion and everything. He recovered fine, but a month later he had a stroke. That can happen, apparently. It was pretty bad at first but he’s —” Almost defensive. “He’s a lot better than he was.”

Though he’d be better if he stopped drinking; if he went to all his appointments and physical therapy; if he tried. Or maybe he wouldn’t, Harvey doesn’t know. It’s a guilty thing, holding the optimistic possibility against his father’s pessimistic present. Roz is always emailing him helpful articles about stroke recovery, but it’s not like he can get his dad to do any of it.

“Hm,” Nick says. “How are you?”

Harvey smiles at him. “Great,” he says pointedly. “How are _you?”_

Nick snorts. Between them, the music plays.

In his room later, Harvey calls Theo, missing his familiarity and thinking of old times. He’s got “The Time Warp” in his head and he taps it against his bedframe as the phone rings and rings. 

Finally, Theo answers in a cacophony of noise — bar sounds, people talking, music, laughter, and his voice calling, “Harv? _Harv?_ Can you hear me?”

“Yeah, Theo, I —” Harvey speaks louder to be heard over whatever’s going on. “Is this a bad time?”

“No, dude, never — here, remember I wanted you to meet my new friend Wren? Here, talk to them —”

The phone gets passed around from one of Theo’s friends to the next and Harvey makes forced friendly conversation with all of them until Theo comes back to say goodbye. Harvey never really gets to talk to him at all, but he’s glad Theo’s having a good time and everything. He really is.

He sighs and flops onto his bed, then cranes half off it so he can get his good pencils out of his bag; while he’s fishing around in there, his fingers curl around something hard and foreign, round with a plastic crinkle. He pulls out one of the lollipops he bought at the pharmacy with Nick. Blueberry pie flavored. He’d completely forgotten about it. 

Harvey settles on his bed again but doesn’t unwrap it. He twirls the lollipop stick between his fingers and calls Nick. 

Nick picks up immediately. “Harry, this is really absurd now. You realize I just left your house.”

“Five bucks says you teleported as soon as you were out of my line of sight.”

Nick is silent. Then, “If I have the power of teleportation, how am I expected _not_ to use it —”

Harvey laughs. “Yeah, yeah. Justify it all you want. What are you doing?”

“I was going to get started on a paper for Monasticism and Scholasticism in Medieval Europe.”

“Dude. Are you ever going to tell me what your major is?”

“I’m keeping my options open. Anyway, did you know —”

While Nick prattles off some nerd stuff, Harvey leans back on his bed and listens, clicks off his lamp and stares up at his ceiling in the dim, familiar dark. Says, “Uh-huh,” and, “No way,” and, “You’re making that up,” when he’s supposed to, but mostly lets Nick’s voice carry him, fill up the space until it doesn’t seem so empty anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can follow my CAOS sideblog for updates [@chillingaudrina](http://chillingaudrina.tumblr.com/), or find me on my main blog [@firstaudrina.](https://firstaudrina.tumblr.com/)


	5. attendance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The quality of attention paid to things.

Harvey jolts awake to the blare of Placebo in his ear, tinny and echoing, which means two things: one, he missed his first alarm somehow, and two, he had fallen asleep on his phone. He peels his face off the still-warm screen and slaps at it until the music stops, then rubs a hand over eyes stinging with sleep. Work. He’s got to — first he should —

He’s willing his brain to defog when he notices two texts from Nick, and suddenly feels very awake.

Both came shortly after midnight. _Goodnight, mortal,_ and then, _You know it’s very rude to fall asleep on someone when they’re being especially interesting._

Harvey is struck by a funny mix of feeling: embarrassment buzzes along the back of his neck, an odd twist in his stomach thinking of the dark room and Nick’s voice, phone burning against his cheek; then the surprise of his mouth already smiling, when he’s used to mornings being an exercise is grim resignation. 

_Good thing no one was being especially interesting, then,_ he texts back, quick, and goes to get ready for work. 

In the kitchen, Harvey hesitates over the coffeemaker, an uncracked egg in his hand, and texts Nick, _what do imps like to eat?_

He’s setting breakfast in front of his dad when his phone buzzes in his pocket, a secret burst of sensation against his hip. _I cannot believe you._

He smiles. _Well?_

A bubble of ellipses, then a gif of an actress Nick probably doesn’t even know rolling her eyes with her whole body, a dramatic swoop of exasperation. It startles a laugh out of Harvey, and his dad gives him an odd sideways look. Finally, _Charred things. The burnt bits._

Harvey blackens a piece of toast and sets it on a plate in the middle of the garage before he leaves for his shift. He’s almost out the door when he catches a gleam on the side table: the handle of Nick’s ridiculous little knife, red jewels in its silver hilt. Harvey only pauses for a second before looping back to tuck it in his bag, just in case. 

Harvey is at his office job until nine, answering phones and turning his head to yawn surreptitiously into his shoulder; hustles to Art History ten minutes late and sketches in the margins of his notebook during the lecture, little doodles of what the imp might look like snacking on burnt toast. He thinks it could make a funny comic. He dips into the café, hoovers a sandwich and coffee on the way to the math class he is decidedly failing; races back across campus for U.S. History 102, WWII to modern day. The whole time his phone is buzzing, buzzing, buzzing.

It’s a strange and silent communication that keeps him almost deliriously alert, checking for a response right before one comes and then making himself wait to reply. He pretends he doesn’t care until the phone vibrates again and he realizes he’d been tensed for it, drumming his pen against his desk with absent impatience. He keeps his phone hidden in his lap or half under his books during class, trying to look casual as he taps out replies letter by letter with the tip of his finger. 

_What do you mean, you don’t know Lou Reed?_

Mortal, how many years will it be before you learn that witches are not raised the way you are. 

_You were in the choir. You had to sing something._

Works of Satanic importance. You know, hymns of great sinners, the murderous and the profane.

_Oh my god._

_I’m sending you a Spotify playlist._

What is Spotify.

Harry. What does it mean when a mortal asks you on a “group hang.”

_Usually that someone wants to hang out in a group._

You’re hilarious.

I assume it’s not a carnal liaison if it’s a public place. 

I have received an upsetting lack of orgy invitations in mortal college.

What is the point, honestly.

Harry.

_Sorry, didn’t want to interrupt your monologue._

_Why are you asking me? I thought you were the expert._

_How many was it again — ten thousand? Twelve?_

It’s gauche to keep count.

You’re the mortal expert.

_It probably means they like you, Nick._

_Maybe they want you to meet their friends._

Ah.

How do mortals like being broken up with, then?

With witches, a blood curse for the duration of a single moon cycle usually does the trick.

Or being caught in flagrante with someone’s best friend or a coterie of incubi.

But I suspect that might be harsh by mortal standards?

Harry?

_You left your thing at the garage._

You’ll have to be more specific.

_Your Shakespearean dagger._

Which one?

_Do you have so many ceremonial daggers that you can’t keep track?_

Yes, obviously. It isn’t my fault your life is unexciting.

_I’m not exactly looking for dagger-related excitement._

Liar. I’ve seen the girls you date. 

Maybe that’s why the jock didn’t do it for you.

_Yeah, not enough swordplay._

_…I walked into that one._

_Please don’t._

Nick sends him the smirking emoji, its eyebrow smugly arched. Then:

It’s called an athame, farm boy.

Bring it by the dorms.

Harvey swings by Nick’s after his last class, eyes on the time like always, every minute of his day allotted and accounted for. Except this stolen ten or fifteen, the detour to the dorms to return the _athame_ that punctured a hole in his bag during math and startled everyone in his immediate vicinity. 

The girl at the front desk is the same as last time. She waves Harvey up with a wink, remarking cheerfully, “Back again, huh?”

“He left something at my place,” Harvey says, which sounds a lot more incriminating out loud than it did in his head. “Nothing like — ugh. Nevermind.”

When Harvey gets to Nick’s room, he finds a boy blocking the door, sitting with his back against it while he works busily on his laptop. He has straight dark hair and thick square glasses, a small pile of history textbooks beside him.

“Hey,” Harvey says. “Is Nick in?”

From behind the door comes the low, pleasant hum of Nick’s voice — gentle and cajoling, the fake charm Harvey’s heard him use with strangers a thousand times. A girl answers, unintelligible and sharp, so it must work on her about as well as it does on Harvey.

“Oh, god, another one,” the boy huffs, barely glancing up. “Who are you? Aiden? Michael? I’m not his personal secretary, you know. I don’t handle his appointments.”

Harvey’s eyebrows arch. “I didn’t think you were. I’m Harvey.”

Behind the door, the girl’s voice spikes, and they both wince. “Never heard of you,” he says, which tracks. But he looks up again and apparently finds Harvey trustworthy enough to extend a hand. “I’m Ben Kim. The roommate.”

“I’m so sorry,” Harvey says earnestly, and Ben seems touched that someone is. He captures Harvey’s hand between both of his and gives it an emphatic shake.

“ _Thank you._ Seriously, just — thank you.”

Harvey’s mouth does a quick upside-down smile. “I bet Nick’s a lot to —” he starts to say, but he’s interrupted by the door opening to eject a furious co-ed with pink hair. She stumbles over Ben and gets half-tangled, inadvertently catching Harvey’s arm to stay upright until she manages to free herself with an enraged yawp. 

“I’m _so_ over this,” she snaps, then stomps off down the hallway, cheeks red.

“Cool hair,” Harvey says wistfully, watching her go. He turns back to see Nick framed in the doorway, hair damp and shirt off, and has to laugh. “Do you ever wear clothes?”

“No,” Ben mutters bitterly. Harvey and Nick exchange half-smiles.

“I just got out of the shower,” Nick says. “I wasn’t expecting company.”

“Doesn’t seem like that makes much of a difference,” Harvey remarks. “You’re running a real heartbreak hotel here, huh? Did you break up with that girl half-naked? Nick. That’s just mean.”

Loftily, Nick says, “It isn’t my fault if misunderstandings occur from time to time. I’m very upfront.” 

While he speaks, he runs a hand through his hair, inky and dark, and dislodges a drop of water that glides down the side of his neck. Harvey follows it, and wonders how easily sense can be obliterated by wishful thinking. “How upfront?”

“He stares soulfully into their eyes while telling them he’s not interested in a relationship,” Ben says. He starts stacking his textbooks, open laptop balanced in the crook of one arm. Harvey bends to help him. “And then treats the entire floor to a chorus of multiple orgasms that makes them forget everything he said beforehand.”

Harvey drops a textbook. “Jesus.” 

Nick smirks. “Have you two been introduced? Ben, Harry. Harry, Ben.”

“His name isn’t — _that’s_ Harry?”

Ben surveys Harvey with a newly assessing air that makes the back of his neck prickle as he hands over Ben’s book. “Disregard whatever Nick told you. He’s an ass.”

Nick makes a protesting noise, but Ben says, “On that we can agree,” before sweeping into the room with all his studious paraphernalia. Harvey smiles.

“Making a great impression on everyone,” he notes.

“Yes, don’t be jealous of my extreme popularity. I believe you have something of mine?”

“Oh, right.” Harvey swings his bag around to pull out the small dagger, feeling unaccountably bizarre passing it back to Nick in a banal college hallway with dusty bulbs and beige walls. The blade flashes in the light, sharp enough to split flesh with ease; Harvey should know. The pinprick wound on his fingertip is already healed, though. Strange magic. “Try not to leave these around, might end up with a weird reputation.” 

“Too late for that.” They share another smile, but Nick’s attention is drawn to his buzzing phone — and Harvey thinks, _oh, I’m not the only one,_ which is stupid because he knows he isn’t. Far from it. His phone isn’t the only one Nick’s blowing up and that’s whatever, it doesn’t matter. 

“Date?” he asks wryly.

Nick’s expression is smug but sheepish, a show of false modesty at being caught out. “In a manner of speaking,” he says, and they nod at each other, mirrored dips of _it is what it is._ “Thanks for coming by, Harry.” 

“Thanks for fitting me into your busy schedule,” Harvey jokes, and steps backwards towards the elevators. Hesitates for a minute without knowing why, but Nick isn’t looking at him anymore, so slips between the elevator doors. Goes home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can follow my CAOS sideblog for updates [@chillingaudrina](http://chillingaudrina.tumblr.com/), or find me on my main blog [@firstaudrina.](https://firstaudrina.tumblr.com/)


	6. pop quizzes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick does Harvey a favor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy belated Lupercalia!

Harvey misses Life Drawing entirely on Monday. 

He gets away with half-shifts in the mines most of the time, three or four hours while other men are down there for ten to twelve, but only because he’s a Kinkle. He bears the brunt of those exhausted, disapproving eyes, set in faces streaked with coal dust and dirt, and escapes long before they think his time is up. But sometimes he feels a pathological impulse to prove something to them, to push, to make it clear that he can do this, he just fucking hates it. 

There’s that saying about spite. Harvey misses the best part of his week because of it.

Prof pats him on the back on her way out of the classroom, trailing after his classmates with their big sketchpads and happy chatter. “I wouldn’t worry too much, Harv,” she says. “And I’m not just saying that.” 

But he’s already behind. Even when he makes it to class, he can’t always keep up with the additional work, or snag the extra studio hours. He’s fallen asleep face-first in his sketchpad more times than he could count. 

“Cheer up!” Prof tells him, continuing her bright march down the hall, coffee cup at her lips. “Whatever you’re working on in your own time, bring it in and I’ll count it towards your grade.”

“Thanks,” Harvey says weakly, then feels bad and repeats with more enthusiasm, “Thank you!”

She’s already too far to hear. A second trickle of students stream past Harvey, showing off their work to each other, one saying, “Call me crazy, that model guy is hot, but he’s definitely on something. Did you see that weird tiny bottle fall out of his pocket? Do you think he deals?”

“No, I think he’s just one of those, like, Insta-pagans,” the friend says. “You know? I saw crystals and stuff in his bag once. That was probably just essential oils. What do you think his sign is?”

“I don’t know, what the hot one?”

The friend snorts and holds up her portfolio, flicking back the cover. “Do you think this is okay? Prof said my shadowing was a little too _enthusiastic,_ I don’t know what that means, but —”

Harvey catches just a flash of the body in her drawing and decides to wait for Nick. He’s out a moment later, adjusting the collar of his turtleneck. He brightens when he sees Harvey. “I was wondering where you were.”

“Some of us have jobs.” It comes out lightly bullying, more than he means it to; it sounds like his father, and he sours at the thought. “I feel better knowing I just missed another Nick Scratch performance.”

“Rude.” They fall into step on their way out of the building, neither in much of a rush. “You’re all lucky I’m magnanimous enough to take my clothes off for free. I could charge, I’ve been told.”

Harvey snorts. “You probably could,” he allows. 

Nick grins. “You think? I could cut you a deal, if you wanted to make up for your missed class.”

He rolls his eyes, then, “Actually, could you?”

Nick is surprised. Harvey is surprised, too. 

“I mean, I’m not paying you, obviously,” Harvey adds, into the silence. “But I really do need to catch up and there isn’t anyone else I can ask.” Hastily, losing confidence, “But I mean you don’t have to, obviously, I didn’t mean to — make it weird, um — if you — You should be comfortable, and I wouldn’t want you to —”

“Harry,” Nick interrupts. “I’d be happy to. I just didn’t think —” He clears his throat. “I have a little time later, before the party, if you want to meet me back here, say… Six-ish?”

“Sure.” It’s casual, not a big deal. Why are his palms suddenly sweating? “Always a party with you, huh?”

“Come on, mortal, this is one of yours. Even you must want to commemorate the occasion.” When he receives only a blank look in response, Nick says, “It’s Valentine’s Day, Harry.”

“Oh.” Harvey had completely forgotten. He spent last Valentine’s with Roz, and the one before that, too; it’s the anniversary of their first real date. Maybe he put it out of his mind on purpose. Every Valentine’s before that was for Sabrina, all the way back to the first grade, when Harvey gave out handmade cards and saved the best for her. His mom had helped him from her bed. They cut out a big construction paper heart and edged it in old lace, then covered it in red glitter that got all over the bedspread, Sabrina’s hands, the inside of her bag. 

This might be his first time flying solo on what Theo has dubbed “the corniest of all holidays.” Harvey had always liked it, before. “Isn’t it also, um — Lupercalia? Don’t you have witch stuff to do?”

Nick’s gaze slides away evasively and he shrugs. “Lupercalia was abolished, actually. Prudence felt it was a heteronormative practice meant to give witches a false sense of power under a misogynistic regime.”

Harvey nods. Roz would probably agree.

“So tonight she’s holding a womb healing for interested parties, as well as a lesson on the broadsword,” Nick continues. “As I’m in need of neither —”

“Party,” Harvey concludes.

“Party,” Nick agrees. They slow naturally at a fork in the path that will lead them in opposite directions, to different classes. “And figure drawing, apparently.”

“Guess so.” He’s already trying to figure out how to make it work. Maybe he can call one of his dad’s friends, guys who’ll get him drunk while they watch whatever game is on. Sometimes they’ll step in for Harvey when he needs it; they’ll do that much. “I’ll see you later, then.”

Nick lingers, and nods. “See you, farm boy.”

All of Harvey’s dad’s friends are assholes. This is not new information. Birds of a feather, and all that.

He cycles through a Bill, a Tim, and a Joe, reaches out to a Tom who might actually be Tommy’s namesake, and gets nowhere with any of them. Three more don’t even pick up. He hates to do it, but he gives in and calls Frankie, preemptively steeled against the discomfort of having to ask. “You already work so hard, I know it’s an imposition —”

She’s good-humored on the other end of the phone, so Dad must not be giving her a tough time today. “Oh, please, my ex has the kids, and I like money more than chocolate. We can do it for my usual. You got a date or something?”

“Oh, no, no, no, nothing like that,” Harvey says, then wonders if three _no’s_ are one too many. “There’s, um. Just this guy and —”

Her voice softens. “Say no more.”

“No, it’s not like —”

“Don’t worry about it,” Frankie insists. “I’ve got you covered.”

It actually makes his chest ache, someone older than him being _nice_ when they don’t have to be. “Thank you so much,” he says earnestly. “It’ll only be for a couple of hours —”

“Take your time,” she says. “Have some fun, for once.”

Harvey’s last class finishes early, so he heads down to the studio to set up only to find Nick already waiting outside. He’s leaning casually against the wall with his back to Harvey, an open book cradled in his arm with a notebook propped inside it so he can jot things down as he goes. Harvey bumps his shoulder and watches the pen skitter, a spiky line off its last calligraphic letter. “Hey, nerd.”

“Farm boy.” He caps the pen, folds the books in on each other, and tucks them under his arm. “You’re early.”

“You’re earlier,” Harvey points out, pushing the door open. “And what’s with that? The farm boy thing. You know I don’t live on a farm, right? Theo lives on a farm.” Well, lived. “Why don’t you call him that?”

Nick shrugs off his bag and then his coat, depositing both in a heap on the nearest chair. “I suppose it’s just something about you,” he says, and when Harvey arches an eyebrow, offers only, “Milk-fed,” in a way that makes Harvey flush, either in annoyance or the other thing.

He chooses annoyance. “Gee, thanks.”

Nick smirks. “Anytime.” His fingers go to the hem of his shirt, arms crossing over his stomach to peel it upwards.

“Arghh!” Harvey’s hand flies out to quell _that,_ sadly without the eloquence he would have liked to accompany it. “No. No, you don’t — none of. No. You don’t have to take your clothes off. Life drawing is not always naked. It just requires, you know — a live model.”

Nick stares at him. “So…” he says slowly. “You did not invite me here with the intention of getting me out of my clothes?”

“No,” Harvey breathes on a relieved sigh. “Absolutely not.”

Nick mulls this over, gaze sliding from side to side as though he’s on a prank show and looking for the cameras. “I do not understand mortals,” he grumbles, and throws his hands up, striding to the platform in the center of the room.

“Yeah, we’re aware.” Harvey sets his sketchpad on the easel. “Should be a fun change for you.”

Nick snorts derisively and perches on the stool the way he had the first time Harvey saw him here: heel hooked on its lowest rung, one knee crooked while the other leg stretches long and straight. He crosses his arms. “How’s this?”

Harvey smiles a little. “Perfect.” 

He’s seen Nick naked a stupid amount of times by now, enough that it’s a nice respite to focus instead on the way fabric encloses him — the bunching of his shirt around folded arms, the pull of his wool trousers over his thighs. Nick is always an exercise in shadow but now Harvey sees the texture in it, the subtle crosshatching in his turtleneck’s thin knit, the soft curl of his hair. The beauty mark on his neck that Harvey knows is there even though he can’t see it.

Once Nick had been the first new thing he’d had to draw in a while, a stranger in his kitchen pouring over dating books from the eighties. “Remember the first time I drew you?” He smudges a bit of shading. “You burned it after.”

“Mm. It’s dangerous for a witch to leave their image lying around. Too easy to enchant.”

“You don’t seem to mind much anymore.”

The corner of Nick’s mouth twists his petulant frown into something cold and sardonic. “After Hell, what more could anyone do to me?”

Harvey pauses, pencil tip to paper, and meets his eyes, but Nick only smiles.

“You know,” he says after a moment. “When you…went.” When Harvey carried him down to the gates of Hell and handed him off, something he’ll always regret. “Sabrina didn’t have any pictures of you, so I drew one for her.”

Nick’s expression shifts again, wary now, as though prepared for hurt. Harvey used to think of his face as a handsome mask, like the comedy-tragedy ones that hung over the auditorium, except Nick had Charm and Wickedness instead. Now there are all these unexpected variations. Harvey watches that mean something to Nick, that Sabrina found a way to see him while he was gone, and he also watches it abruptly mean nothing; dismissed, consumed by Nick’s amused indifference. “Well.” He clears his throat. “People do like to look at me.”

“And he’s modest, too,” Harvey says dryly. “I don’t know how it doesn’t make you crazy, to be honest.” 

“There’s power in people looking at you, if you can control what they’re seeing.”

“Can you?”

“You tell me.”

Harvey turns the picture he’s working on around, less than half-finished because it would take more graphite than he has to render all of Nick’s many shades of black. “What do you think?”

“Unsurprisingly, my sex appeal has survived the unfair constraints you put on it.” 

He laughs. “You are so fucking annoying,” he says. “Change pose.”

Nick pushes the stool aside and sits again, cross-legged and leaning back on his hands, grinning lazily. After that, he gets his book and does some work of his own, the room quiet and mellow except for paper sounds, pages turning and pencil moving. It’s like that, absorbed in what he’s doing, that Nick’s body relaxes, the upright shoulders slumping and cheek sinking into his hand. Harvey likes the hard curve of his back, and how he seems to forget that Harvey is watching him at all.

“Okay,” Harvey says, and Nick glances up, inquisitive. “You can take your shirt off.”

Nick shifts his weight slowly onto one hip as he repositions his legs under himself, sitting up very straight with his hands on his knees. Harvey’s heart is an ocean in his ears. Nick reaches back and pulls his shirt forward, over his head and off so his hair is rumpled, curls gone a little wild. He holds onto it loosely and studies Harvey for what’s next, muscle tensing under skin.

“Good,” Harvey says, hand already moving, “Hold that.”

“Explain it to me. The control thing.”

“What?”

“What you said before,” Harvey clarifies. “About people looking at you.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I had stumbled into my Psych lecture.”

“You taking that, too? Relax. Sit back like you were — yeah, lean on your elbow. That’s good.”

Nick sinks his weight onto his arm, ankles crossed. “It’s like one of your old-fashioned magicians, I suppose,” he says finally. “Sleight of hand. A lot of flash to distract from — well.”

It’s more self-aware than Harvey expects. It’s interesting, to think that Nick might want people to see him as put-together and uncaring, a good time without a good morning afterwards. The guy Harvey thought he was initially, a snake in the grass making empty promises. It must feel comfortable to be that again, the way Harvey is comfortable being invisible. Well. Not comfortable. Familiar. “Is that why you, um. Sorry. That’s not really… I shouldn’t ask.”

“Now you have to. The suspense is killing me.” 

Harvey takes cover slightly behind the easel, not that it helps, because Nick is there too. “The, uh, sleeping around. Is that what it’s about? Distraction?”

“No, it’s about having fun. I thought mortals did that in college. Experimented. Didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but —” It’s the voraciousness, the intensity with which Nick does it, and everything else; there are no half-measures with him. An inveterate liar who will go to Hell for a girl to make up for it; who came back just to steer himself off a cliff, then clawed his way back up and turned himself into — whoever he was last year. That squeaky clean guy. “What do you get out of it?”

“Don’t you ever —" Nick’s aggrieved huff rings in the quiet, and Harvey tilts to peer at him again. He wonders what the truth looks like on Nick. “Don’t you ever want someone to want you? Make you feel like you’re there; like you exist.”

Harvey remembers the way his anxiety had evaporated upon seeing a familiar face in a crowded party, even though it was a face he didn’t especially like. “I guess. But it didn’t really work out how I thought it would.”

“The jock.”

“Yeah, yeah. The jock.”

“Are you ever going to tell me what happened there?”

“I already told you what happened. You want a play-by-play?”

“Well.” A lascivious eyebrow; laughter.

“I don’t know, man. You’d probably have to get me drunk for that.”

“What are you doing after this?”

Harvey laughs again before he realizes Nick is serious. He turns to a fresh page. “Going home. Homework, chores. The usual.”

Nick manages to wave that off without moving at all. “Work’s for the witching hour,” he says, though Harvey isn’t so sure about that. Isn’t the witching hour after midnight? “You should come to the party.”

Harvey shakes his head before the word _party_ has even left Nick’s lips. “Half of GCC trying to drunkenly hook up on a Monday night just because it’s a national holiday? Pass.”

“Oh, come on,” Nick wheedles. “It’s depressing to be alone on Valentine’s Day. Or so I’ve heard. Have some fun for once!”

That makes Harvey hesitate, Frankie’s voice echoing in the back of his head. _For once_. He _is_ covered for the night, if he wants to be. “Won’t I get in your way? I’m not playing wingman.” 

“As if you even could,” Nick says archly, then, “I don’t know what that is, but I don’t need one. If it makes you feel better, I’ll ditch you as soon as I get a better offer.”

Harvey snorts. “Well, a promise like that. Who could say no?”

Nick decides that Harvey absolutely can’t go to the party as he is. 

“What’s wrong with this?” Harvey asks, gesturing at himself, and he can’t lie — he does it mostly to hear Nick’s indignant squawk.

“Harry, please.” Nick takes in Harvey’s wrinkled t-shirt and oversized flannel with visible distaste. “I’ll handle it. But first —” He raises both hands before bringing them down and back up with a snap, a decisive swoop that instantly whisks away both of their bags, Nick’s pile of books, and the sketches. Nick is also suddenly wearing a new outfit — a skintight black racerback tank top tucked into pinstripe trousers, a few silver necklaces hanging low on his chest, and his hair purposefully tousled. 

“Okay, you are not allowed to dress me,” Harvey says, dry-mouthed. “You’re going to be freezing.” A beat later, he realizes, “Wait, my stuff —”

With a faint note of amusement, Nick says, “Relax, I only sent it home where it belongs.” His head tips to the side as he scrutinizes Harvey, stepping forward into his space in a way that makes Harvey step awkwardly back, maintaining the distance. But Nick only moves forward again, his hands slipping under the flannel and landing lightly on Harvey’s t-shirt, warm — too warm.

“Nick,” Harvey warns, but Nick says something in Latin that distracts him, and he’s distracted further by the brush of Nick’s fingers against his skin. Wait. Harvey looks down, Nick’s stupid triumphant grin flashing in his field of vision, and finds the bottom half of his shirt is missing. “Nick! I liked this shirt!” 

“I can’t imagine why.” Undeterred, Nick reaches up to card his fingers through Harvey’s hair, his upturned face very prissily focused, and Harvey wavers in place like heat rising with nowhere to go. By the time he finds his voice again, Nick is dragging him out the door.

The party is at the pink Ravenettes house, which is fitting because the inside is an explosion of holiday clichés: metallic pink streamers hang from the ceiling and red posterboard hearts are plastered on the walls, boxes of candy conversation hearts strewn across every surface and saccharine confetti littering the carpet. The girls toast pink cups of rosé while their boyfriends slurp warily at cans of beer. Pop music rings through every room. 

A gaggle of former cheerleaders shriek at Nick and converge on him, a bee on a rose against all their pink and red party dresses. Then, one by one, their eyes land on Harvey over his shoulder. _“Hiii,”_ one of them coos, and another, “Nick, who’s your friend?”

Harvey feels like a deer on the other end of a shotgun until Nick reaches back to take him by the wrist. “Give him a minute to acclimate, ladies,” he says, starting to pull Harvey towards the kitchen. “We’re getting a drink first.” He winks. “Keeping the mystery alive.” 

Everyone seems to know Nick. In the kitchen he finds a round of boys to trade cheek-kisses with, guys who pass him drinks that he downs with ease before even approaching the beer to get his own; people clamor for his attention, that five seconds of uninterrupted eye contact, but they don’t actually ask him anything, not how he is or what he’s up to. He doesn’t bother, either. It’s all surface stuff. “Look at you,” he teases a guy with a bleached buzzcut, palm briefly cradling his head, and, “Do you think I should get one of these?” as his fingers flit against someone’s conch piercing. 

Harvey thinks, okay, cool, he’ll be this moment’s amusement until Nick does find a better deal. A joke made into a matter of fact. But then Nick pulls away from the crowd and meets Harvey’s eyes with dark mischief, remarks, “What do you say, farm boy? Let’s dance.”

Harvey plans to nurse one beer for the night, as is his usual habit, but something happens in an atmosphere like this; it’s too easy to get swept up, overheated, to finish one cup before you realize you’ve started it. People seem to like him today, maybe because of Nick’s stamp of approval. The cheerleaders ruffle his hair as though they hadn’t ignored him all four years of high school; they ask if he’ll paint their portraits and crack _Titanic_ jokes. He keeps hearing that refrain in his head, _have some fun for once. For once, have some fun._

By the time he’s finished his third drink, he’s decided he’s sick of being responsible. So many people get to treat booze like it’s nothing. So many people haven’t had to grow up disposing of bottles and cringing at the sound of ice cubes clinking in a glass. Why should they get that when Harvey doesn’t? He never did anything to deserve it. Why can’t he have fun, for once?

“And there’s this dance with ribbons, while someone plays the violin,” Nick explains, eyes bright the way they always are when he gets to explain something, but brighter now with the slow-burn acid of alcohol. “The warlocks sit in a circle and whichever witchever — no, whichever _witch_ is in his lap when the music stops is the one he’s paired with —”

“I can see why Prudence got rid of this,” Harvey says.

“No, no, that’s not the — you’re missing the romance of it, Harry,” he says severely. “The point is that we tricked Dorcas — rest in strife —and it was a thing we did together, Sabrina and me. It was like — like we were a _team.”_

Harvey regrets not being able to draw Nick now, all glassy and glossy, polished to a shine. Someone put a lantern over the bulb so the light hits one side of his face with a reddish tinge, turns his hair onyx. Harvey really should be drawing him in ink. 

“But it was bullshit, because of me,” Nick says, and lets his forehead _thunk_ ill-advisedly against the wall. Harvey carefully tips his head back up, Nick’s temple lolling against his palm. “That’s when we were going to — for the first time.” 

“That’s cool, because she and I broke up like a day and a half before that,” Harvey says. “But okay.”

“We didn’t, because my familiar, Amalia, she’s a werewolf —”

“Of course she is.”

“She _was_. She attacked us and Sabrina had to stab her to death —"

“Sabrina _what?!”_

“But it was good we didn’t, it was good, because it wouldn’t have been honest. And then maybe she would never have forgiven me, you know? She didn’t know what I’d done, so it wouldn’t have been like she really consented —"

“Good,” Harvey says encouragingly. “Yes, that’s good, Nick.”

Nick catches Harvey by the chin. “Patronizing,” he says, and Harvey laughs, so Nick laughs too. But his dark eyes turn melancholy so quickly that Harvey’s brows draw together, wanting to undo it somehow. “We made up for it next Lupercalia.”

Harvey is lost for a minute until it clicks, and he gulps from his dumb pink cup. How many has it been? He has no idea. “Okay, I don’t need to —"

“That’s what we decided, you know, to start fresh, that we would — that we’d do it right the second time around.” Nick’s fingers press against his own sternum, chains tangling loosely in his fingers. “It was the best night of my life. That was only last year. Do you — can you believe it was only last year?”

“No,” Harvey sighs. Last year, he’d saved up to take Roz to this feminist film festival the next town over, and they spent the night at a roadside motel. She told her parents she was staying with Sabrina. They ate vending machine chips sitting on the same bed and watched a crummy old TV that only seemed to get reruns of daytime talk shows from the nineties. Harvey was really happy because it felt like things were better between them, at least until the chupacabra attacked, but at the time he didn’t know it was almost over. 

While they were doing that, Sabrina and Nick were in the woods, making up for lost time.

“Hey, you know, stuff happens.” Harvey reaches out to give Nick’s arm an awkward pat. “I don’t know why. You can think everything’s great and then you’re just totally wrong.”

“No, what was wrong was me,” Nick says. “Me, thinking I could… I’m not the person who can do that. Be the boyfriend. Buy perfect little birthday presents and walk you to your door and hand over my jacket when someone gets cold.” He turns steely. “But I don’t need anyone to love me. I don’t need to belong to anybody —” His smile is loose and malleable. “I belong to everybody.”

“I’m really glad you’re taking a psych class,” Harvey says, and he does mean it, but it makes Nick laugh again, leaning forward until his forehead butts against Harvey’s shoulder. It’s so hot in here that Harvey had to tie the flannel around his hips, and just one less layer makes Nick feel more immediate, somehow.

Soft, Nick says, “Do you know — no, I know you know — what it’s like when she _loves_ you. When she’s looking at you like you’re the only one who matters. When she _trusts_ you. Why would she ever trust me?”

Harvey can’t talk about Sabrina, or even really think about her, especially not when he’s drunk. But a sudden smash cut plays out behind his eyes before he can stop it: her face in the window of her bedroom; her smile over her shoulder up the path to her door; her voice on the phone when he was barely awake; her mouth against his saying, _don’t tell Nick_. 

Harvey doesn’t tell Nick. He says, “I know, buddy,” quietly, because he does. Nick sways in place, then puts his hand against Harvey’s chest to push himself upright.

“More drinks,” Nick decides.

After five minutes of deferring drink offers and invitations to dance from people he doesn’t know, Harvey decides to go after Nick. He’s about to duck through the doorway into the kitchen when Carl steps through on the other side. They both freeze before they collide, teetering like there’s an invisible forcefield between them preventing contact. 

Neither of them knows what to say for a minute, and then Carl offers, “You’re not usually at these.”

“And somehow this is our third run-in at one.”

Carl’s brows bunch and he frowns. It occurs to Harvey that didn’t sound like him; it sounded like Nick. “There’ve been more than three.” 

“Yeah, I — I know, Carl.” Harvey waits, but when he doesn’t move, “I’m actually looking for someone, so —”

“You doing all this for that guy?” Carl blurts, and takes an immediate sip of beer. “Kind of desperate, man, but whatever.”

He doesn’t get what _all this_ means until Carl’s eyes flick over him and he remembers his unintentional crop top situation, the vintage Rolling Thunder Revue t-shirt that once had Dylan’s whole face on it but is now just a mop of curls peeking out from beneath a feathered hat. He resists the urge to fold his arms. It’s not like Carl hasn’t already — whatever. “Yeah, that’s me, desperate for male attention.”

“You know he has, like, a reputation.”

Harvey’s eyes narrow. “What’s your point?”

Carl shrugs. “Just saying, he’s been here like a month and he’s already worked his way through half the campus. I wouldn’t get hung up on him, he sleeps with everybody —”

“That sounds like his business,” Harvey says sharply. 

“Yeah, no, sure,” Carl says, shoulders hunching, and clears his throat. “I’m just saying, you know —”

“Uh-huh.” Harvey scratches the back of his neck, searching for an escape when a body slips around Carl; with relief he says, “I was wondering where,” and Nick kisses his open mouth on _you_ , swallowing the word and Harvey’s surprise with it. His booze-blunted brain catches on after the rest of him already has, his eyes dragging closed and open and closed again like trying to stay awake too late at night. In between each slow blink is the crescent of Nick’s face, intent, and his mouth, god. 

His lips part for the roll of Nick’s tongue against his own, dirty and bold. Nick smiles when he pulls back, purrs, “Hey, lover. I was looking for you.”

Harvey can’t come to the phone right now. If you would like for him to get back to you, please leave a message after the —

Nick brushes Harvey’s numb mouth with another kiss, then glances over his shoulder, simultaneously sly and disinterested. As though he’s only just noticing that someone else is there. And right then, Harvey gets it. His hands fall from Nick’s back.

“Can I help you?” Nick asks Carl, who mumbles something and slinks off, leaving Nick grinning up at Harvey, pleased as punch. “You’re welcome. Let’s do shots.”

Harvey does. Pink and red jello shots, artificial strawberry and vodka burning his tongue until he can hardly feel it, which is good. He’s too drunk to deal with this so the obvious solution is to get drunker, until it all buzzes and fizzes and doesn’t matter. Nick is a vivid blur beside him on the couch they’re crammed on, people on either side tipping them towards each other. His arm presses against Nick’s, skin to skin; his knee, his calf all the way down to the ankle. 

“Now you have to tell me, you know,” Nick says, in Harvey’s ear to be heard despite the crowd. He can’t seem to stop grinning, thrilled by his own misbehavior. “Out with it, Harry. All the gory details.”

Harvey said Nick would have to get him drunk for that, and he’s definitely drunk. So he tells Nick about the kissing, which was good, or good enough; and the other stuff, which was less so. “One really bad blowjob, on my end,” he says, thinking of Carl’s hand on his own belt buckle, the other on the back of Harvey’s neck. “And, like, some hand stuff?”

“I love hearing you say the word blowjob,” Nick says. “It’s such a novelty. Say it again.” 

Harvey laughs and makes a face, sinking back into the couch. Nick leans back too, arranging himself in Harvey’s direction, elbow on the cushions to keep his head propped up. “Did you fuck him?”

Harvey’s confused, because he thought they’d covered that, but then it clicks and he shakes his head, flushing. “Uh, no. He wasn’t interested in that, except if it was gonna be, um. The other way around.” Nick’s eyes go so round that Harvey has to rub a hand over his face, laughing again, his skin hot to the touch. “That didn’t happen either.”

“And then?”

“Called it quits,” Harvey says. “Not with a bang, but with a, you know.” Nick’s full smile is — really something, how rare it is, and the way his eyes crinkle at the corners. “Now you owe me.”

Nick’s brows draw in slightly with a little head-shake of confusion. “What?”

“What you’re doing here. Playing college boy.”

Nick nods, like _ah,_ and his smile is smaller, almost abashed. “I just wanted something different,” he says. “Nothing that felt familiar.” 

He might say more, but one of the cheer girls deposits herself in his lap and Harvey has to oust her, and that’s the end of that.

Harvey walks Nick home, or they walk each other, close under the bubble of Nick’s warming charm and hanging on so they don’t slip on ice and die. Harvey doesn’t know why he didn’t just call for a car and bite the bullet on the surge pricing, but there’s something bracing about the night air and Nick’s hand on his arm, keeping each other steady when they’re both a minute from stumbling. 

Outside Nick’s dorm, he sags against the wall to search for keys he might very well have vanished earlier. There are hazy gaps in the journey back; Harvey has no memory of being in the elevator, but he remembers leaving it, the cool metal against his fingers as he grasped the door on the way out. He watches Nick from the opposite side of the hallway before pushing off and drifting closer, shoulder braced against the little notch formed between the wall and Nick’s body. 

“How many pockets do you have?” he jokes, as Nick’s hands slip into his coat and trousers, checking and double checking. “Where do you even fit them?”

Nick glances up with a wry smile but then something in his expression changes, some small shift from humor to heat. Harvey feels drunker under these strange hall lights that never really turn off, surrounded by the muffled sounds of so many people. He slides his hand under himself and hoists off the wall, but his motor skills aren’t all there and it actually makes him lurch a little, Nick’s hand snaking out quick to grab his jacket. Harvey had been after some distance because being close to Nick is making him dizzy, but now he’s leaning over Nick, hand pressed against the wall beside him. 

He allows himself, for once, to loom. He enjoys the way Nick has to tilt his chin up to look at him.

Amused, Nick says, “You can.”

Harvey pulls his gaze away from Nick’s mouth. “What?”

A shrug. “Whatever you want.”

Harvey’s thoughts stutter like a faulty record player. All he can think to say is, “You’re Sabrina’s boyfriend,” which is one of those things that’s both true and not true.

“So are you,” Nick says.

That’s a minefield Harvey has to walk through carefully. Instead of acknowledging it, he slouches in slightly, arm bending at the elbow, and watches as slowly, so slowly, Nick closes his eyes. 

And then the door opens for an aggrieved Ben Kim to poke his head out. Harvey straightens, but Nick doesn’t, still holding onto his jacket. 

“Some of us were _trying_ to watch _Runaway Bride_ in peace,” Ben huffs. “But _couldn’t,_ because both Jessica _and_ Aiden came by looking for you, then had a crisis when they found out you’d apparently forgotten not one, but _two_ dates.”

“Who?” Nick says, irritated, “I don’t care,” and that hits Harvey the wrong way. He should care. He can do whatever he wants, but Jessica and Aiden, whoever they are, are still people; people who had probably been looking forward to their Valentine’s plans and maybe got dressed up, maybe pinned a hope or two on the night. Harvey feels bad. He takes half a step back, and Nick’s head swivels towards him. “Harry —”

“I don’t think you need me here,” he says lightly, and smiles a little. “Goodnight, Nick.”

This time when he goes, Nick watches him leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can follow my CAOS sideblog for updates [@chillingaudrina](http://chillingaudrina.tumblr.com/), or find me on my main blog [@firstaudrina.](https://firstaudrina.tumblr.com/)


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